Raiders of the Lost Lake

In the early 1990s, a Russian drilling rig encountered something peculiar two miles beneath the coldest and most desolate place on Earth. For decades, the workers at Vostok Research Station in Antarctica had been extracting core samples from deep scientific boreholes, and analyzing the lasagna-like layers of ice to study Earth's bygone climate. But after tunneling through 414,000 layers or so– about two miles into the icecap– the layers abruptly ended. The ice below that depth was relatively clear and featureless, a deviation the scientists were at a loss to explain. In search of answers, the men drilled on.

Unbeknownst to the Russians, their drill had mingled with the uppermost reaches of one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world; a pristine pocket of liquid whose ecosystem was separated from the rest of the Earth millions of years ago. As for what sort of organisms might lurk in that exotic environment today, no one can really be certain.

In prehistoric times the Antarctic continent was much more temperate, with lush tropical foliage and thriving wildlife. But millions of years ago the Earth's extra-flaky crust caused the landmasses of Australia and South America to gradually peel away from Antarctica, creating a ring of open sea around the southernmost continent. This allowed a massive oceanic current to begin encircling the pole, deflecting warmer northerly currents away from Antarctica's shores. Without warm water to moderate the temperature, a scab of polar ice developed over the formerly forested lands.

Roughly forty million years later, in 1996, the men and women of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) urged their Russian colleagues to halt their indiscriminate drilling.

Airborne radar and satellite altimetry had finally managed to penetrate the thick mound of ice over the south pole, and after electromagnetically groping every rock and crevice in Antarctica, a flat region 155 miles long and 31 miles wide was detected below Vostok Station. As improbable as it seemed, SCAR researchers surmised that a liquid lake must lie just below the Russians' steadily advancing bore shaft. In order to avoid contaminating the huge lake with surface bacteria and drilling chemicals, the tunneling had to be stopped.

Lake Vostok was found to have approximately the same surface area as the great Lake Ontario in North America, with more than thrice the depth. Separated from sunlight by two miles of solid ice, the subglacial lake is a place of profound darkness and bitter cold. The water temperature is estimated at 3 degrees below zero Celsius, but it maintains a liquid state due to the crushing weight of the polar ice slab; the temperature at which water freezes is significantly lower under such phenomenal pressure. It is also suspected that geothermal heat from the ground below adds some ambient warmth. According to the ice cores extracted by the Vostok Base scientists, the lonely lake has been sealed beneath the ice for at least 500,000 years, but possibly as much as 25 million.

As requested, the Russians temporarily suspended their drilling efforts pending further study. Their borehole– which was filled with sixty tons of kerosene and freon to prevent re-freezing– stopped within a mere 300 feet of the lake surface. The anomalous ice they had encountered turned out to be lake water which had long ago frozen to the bottom of the slowly migrating glacier. These ice samples provided a few insights into the lake's anatomy, such as its lack of salt, and its absurd overabundance of oxygen; under extreme pressures oxygen will more readily dissolve in water. If the drilling over Vostok had continued uninterrupted, thereby encroaching upon the liquid portion of the lake, the hapless Russians might have been assaulted by a towering geyser of ancient water and liberated oxygen due to the astonishing pressure of the hidden body of water.

In the wake of the lake's discovery, there arose considerable debate regarding the likelihood of finding life there. The environment is remarkably similar to the dark and cold ocean below the surface of Jupiter's ice moon Europa, so the discovery of life in Vostok could have interesting extraterrestrial implications. Due to the cold, the complete absence of sunlight, and the toxic levels of oxygen, many scientists are certain that Lake Vostok is sterile. That, however, would be a scientific first, since never before has a completely lifeless body of water been found on Earth. Extremophile organisms have turned up in the unlikeliest of places, including within volcanic vents on the ocean floor, in the rocks deep in the Earth's crust, and in frozen arctic soil.

It is not unreasonable to suggest that cold-tolerant creatures could thrive in the waters of Lake Vostok, overcoming the oxygen saturation with extraordinary natural antioxidants. But millions of years of evolutionary isolation in an extreme environment may have created some truly bizarre organisms. This notion is supported by the ice samples drawn from the ice just above Lake Vostok, where some unusual and unidentifiable microbial fossils have been found. But the possibility that they are merely contaminates has not yet been completely ruled out.

At present, a number of researchers are mulling over methods to investigate the lake's unique ecosystem without defiling its pristine nature. The introduction of any organisms or chemicals from the surface could irreversibly pollute its waters, and there is a small but real possibility that the lake's alien organisms could be dangerous to humans. To date, the best candidate seems to be the cryobot, a fittingly phallic penetrating probe designed to gingerly work its way into the virgin lake. Its heated tip would melt a channel straight into the ice as it unspools a power and communications line behind it. The melted water would quickly re-freeze behind the cryobot in temperatures which linger around minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and once it finally reached the water it would eject a small submersible hydrobot to capture images and take measurements.

Though most scientists are proceeding with considerable caution, and some advocate avoiding the lake altogether, there are reports that the Russian researchers intend to restart drilling in order to reach the lake before their rivals. The Antarctic Treaty of 1961 guarantees all nations the right to conduct non-military scientific study on the continent, therefore little can be done to intervene if the men at Vostok station insist upon proceeding. Several smaller lakes have since been identified beneath the Antarctic icecap, but geologists speculate many of these are linked by a network of under-ice rivers, so contaminating just one lake might taint them all beyond repair.

If science seizes the opportunity to properly explore this perplexing pocket of liquid, it would be equally enlightening whether there is a plethora of life or a complete absence thereof. If the lake is found to be sterile, its desolate waters will provide some measure of insight into life's practical limitations. But if living things do indeed lurk beneath the thick Antarctic icecap– even if only in microbial form– their presence will demonstrate that life is made up of truly resilient stuff, with scientific implications well beyond the scope of our planet.

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Tesla's Tower of Power

In 1905, a team of construction workers in the small village of Shoreham, New York labored to erect a truly extraordinary structure. Over a period of several years the men had managed to assemble the framework and wiring for the 187-foot-tall Wardenclyffe Tower, in spite of severe budget shortfalls and a few engineering snags. The project was overseen by its designer, the eccentric-yet-ingenious inventor Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 - 7 January 1943). Atop his tower was perched a fifty-five ton dome of conductive metals, and beneath it stretched an iron root system that penetrated more than 300 feet into the Earth's crust. "In this system that I have invented, it is necessary for the machine to get a grip of the earth," he explained, "otherwise it cannot shake the earth. It has to have a grip… so that the whole of this globe can quiver."

Though it was far from completion, it was rumored to have been tested on several occasions, with spectacular, crowd-pleasing results. The ultimate purpose of this unique structure was to change the world forever.

Tesla's inventions had already changed the world on several occasions, most notably when he developed modern alternating current technology. He had also won fame for his victory over Thomas Edison in the well-publicized "battle of currents," where he proved that his alternating current was far more practical and safe than Edison-brand direct current. Soon his technology dominated the world's developing electrical infrastructure, and by 1900 he was widely regarded as America's greatest electrical engineer. This reputation was reinforced by his other major innovations, including the Tesla coil, the radio transmitter, and fluorescent lamps.

In 1891, Nikola Tesla gave a lecture for the members of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in New York City, where he made a striking demonstration. In each hand he held a gas discharge tube, an early version of the modern fluorescent bulb. The tubes were not connected to any wires, but nonetheless they glowed brightly during his demonstration. Tesla explained to the awestruck attendees that the electricity was being transmitted through the air by the pair of metal sheets which sandwiched the stage. He went on to speculate how one might increase the scale of this effect to transmit wireless power and information over a broad area, perhaps even the entire Earth. As was often the case, Tesla's audience was engrossed but bewildered.

Back at his makeshift laboratory at Pike's Peak in Colorado Springs, the eccentric scientist continued to wring the secrets out of electromagnetism to further explore this possibility. He rigged his equipment with the intent to produce the first lightning-scale electrical discharges ever accomplished by mankind, a feat which would allow him to test many of his theories about the conductivity of the Earth and the sky. For this purpose he erected a 142-foot mast on his laboratory roof, with a copper sphere on the tip. The tower's substantial wiring was then routed through an exceptionally large high-voltage Tesla coil in the laboratory below. On the night of his experiment, following a one-second test charge which momentarily set the night alight with an eerie blue hum, Tesla ordered his assistant to fully electrify the tower.

Though his notes do not specifically say so, one can only surmise that Tesla stood at Pike's Peak and cackled diabolically as the night sky over Colorado was cracked by the man-made lightning machine. Colossal bolts of electricity arced hundreds of feet from the tower's top to lick the landscape. A curious blue corona soon enveloped the crackling equipment. Millions of volts charged the atmosphere for several moments, but the awesome display ended abruptly when the power suddenly failed. All of the windows throughout Colorado Springs went dark as the local power station's industrial-sized generator collapsed under the strain. But amidst such dramatic discharges, Tesla confirmed that the Earth itself could be used as an electrical conductor, and verified some of his suspicions regarding the conductivity of the ionosphere. In later tests, he recorded success in an attempt to illuminate light bulbs from afar, though the exact conditions of these experiments have been lost to obscurity. In any case, Tesla became convinced that his dream of world-wide wireless electricity was feasible.

In 1900, famed financier J.P. Morgan learned of Tesla's convictions after reading an article in Century Magazine, wherein the scientist described a global network of high-voltage towers which could one day control the weather, relay text and images wirelessly, and provide ubiquitous electricity via the atmosphere. Morgan, hoping to capitalize on the future of wireless telegraphy, immediately invested $150,000 to relocate Tesla's lab to Long Island to construct a pilot plant for this "World Wireless System." Construction of Wardenclyffe Tower and its dedicated power generating facility began the following year.

In December 1901, a scant few months after construction began, a competing scientist named Guglielmo Marconi executed the world's first trans-Atlantic wireless telegraph signal. Tesla's investors were deeply troubled by the development despite the fact that Marconi borrowed from seventeen Tesla patents to accomplish his feat. Though Marconi's plans were considerably less ambitious in scale, his apparatus was also considerably less expensive. Work at Wardenclyffe continued, but Tesla realized that this his competitor's success with simple wireless telegraphy had greatly diminished the likelihood of further investments in his own, much grander project.

In essence, Tesla's global power grid was designed to "pump" the planet with electricity which would intermingle with the natural telluric currents that move throughout the Earth's crust and oceans. At the same time, towers like the one at Wardenclyffe would fling columns of raw energy skyward into the electricity-friendly ionosphere fifty miles up. To tap into this energy conduit, customers' homes would be equipped with a buried ground connection and a relatively small spherical antenna on the roof, thereby creating a low-resistance path to close the giant Earth-ionosphere circuit. Oceangoing ships could use a similar antenna to draw power from the network while at sea. In addition to electricity, these currents could carry information over great distances by bundling radio-frequency energy along with the power, much like the modern technology to send high-speed Internet data over power lines.

Given his supporting experimental data and previous engineering accomplishments, there was little reason to doubt the veracity of Tesla's claims. But building the power station, the huge wooden tower, and the fifty-five ton conductive dome depleted the original investment money relatively quickly, leading to chronic funding shortages. The complications were further compounded by a stock market crash in 1901 which doubled the cost of building materials and sent investors scurrying for financial cover.

The Wardenclyffe team tested their tower a handful of times during construction, and the results were very encouraging; but the project soon devoured Tesla's personal savings, and it became increasingly clear that no new investments were forthcoming. In 1905, having exhausted all practical financial options, the construction efforts were abandoned.

If Tesla's plans had come to fruition, the pilot plant would have been merely the first of many. Such "magnifying transmitter" towers would have peppered the globe, saturating the planet with free electricity and wireless communication as early as the 1920s. Instead, the futuristic facility's potential went untapped for over a decade, until the tower was finally demolished for salvage in 1917.

Tesla's ingenious design for the wireless transmission of electricity

The fall of Wardenclyffe thrust the brilliant inventor into a deep depression and financial distress, and in the years that followed his colleagues began to seriously doubt his mental well-being. His eccentricities became increasingly exaggerated, underscored by his tendency to bring home and care for the injured pigeons he encountered during his daily visits to the park. He also developed an unnatural fear of germs, washing his hands compulsively and refusing to eat any food which had not been disinfected through boiling. But his mind remained pregnant with groundbreaking ideas, as he demonstrated when he described radar technology in 1917, almost twenty years before it became a reality.In 1928, aged seventy-two years, he filed one of his last patents; it described an ingenious lightweight flying machine that was an early precursor to today's tilt-rotor Vertical Short Takeoff and Landing (VSTOL) planes such as the V-22 Osprey.

Nikola Tesla shuffled off this mortal coil in 1943, suffering a heart attack alone in his hotel room. Though he kept copious diaries of his experiments and ideas throughout his life, they were notoriously vague and lacking in technical details. He preferred to rely on his photographic memory for such nuances, therefore much of his knowledge went with him to the grave. Some modern investigations and calculations, however, do support Tesla's contention that wireless electricity is not only feasible, but it may have even been a superior alternative to the extensive and costly grid of power lines which crisscross our globe today.

Had Wardenclyffe been completed without interruption, Tesla may have once again managed to alter the course of history. Instant access to power, information, pirated phonograph cylinders, and lewd photos of bare-ankled floozies on the TeslaNet may have ushered in the Information Age almost a century ahead of schedule, making today's world a very different place indeed. Perhaps one day we will enjoy the future that Tesla envisioned, albeit a bit behind schedule.

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The Twin Within The Twin

Fetus in Fetu

In India, doctors are operating to remove what they thinks is a massive tumour on a man who looks nine months pregnant. When they cut him open, they are horrified by what they find inside.

Deep inside Sanjay Kumar, possibly also known as Sanju Bhagat, is the body of his twin brother. A half-formed baby that has lain inside him, as a parasite, for thirty six years. Sanjay's story is shocking but every twin pregnancy is fraught with danger. His case is the extreme end of a range of conditions that affect twins in the womb. All too often the journey from conception to birth may be a battle; a battle that can end in death.

May 1999, in the city of Nagpur in India on a hot summer night, thirty six year old Sanjay Kumar is rushed to hospital. His stomach is so swollen he looks nine months pregnant and he can barely breathe. Doctors think he has a giant tumour and decide to operate immediately. Dr Ajay Mehta of the Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai recalls "Basically, the tumour was so big that it was pressing on his diaphragm and that's why he was very breathless".

Surgeons prepare to operate, they know they're facing a dangerous task but are unaware of the full scale of the horror they're dealing with. Dr Mehta and his team begin to operate and soon it becomes clear they're not dealing with any tumour. They cut into the mysterious lump and out gushed gallons of pus to reveal a strange, almost human, shape within. Dr Mehta relates "To my surprise and horror I could shake hands with someone inside".

Inside Sanjay's belly is the half-formed body of an infant boy. Dr Suchitra Mehta tells us "The feet and hands were well developed. It had fingers and nails; the nails were quite long".

It is a baby boy, and it has been growing inside Sanjay for thirty six years. Even more shocking, this baby is the mutated body of Sanjay's twin brother. The half-formed twin has been growing inside him parasitically feeding off him, sooner or later it would have killed him.

Sanjay had suffered one of the world's strangest medical conditions, where one foetus envelops and absorbs it's twin inside the womb, called fetus in fetu. It occurs in less than one in five hundred thousand deliveries.

Fetus-in-fetu comes about when, early in pregnancy, one twin foetus wraps round and envelops the other. As the foetus then grows, what would have been it's twin remains inside it attaching it's blood vessels to it's host and feeding off it as a parasite.

Normally, fetus in fetu is diagnosed in the womb or soon after birth. These days, with ultrasound technology, cases of fetus in fetu are usually detected very early on. Sanjay's case was unprecedented, doctors were baffled as to how his parasitic twin had gone undetected for 36 years.

To doctors, Sanjay's case may have been a medical miracle but, it brought only shame and misery to him. As he grew older his belly got bigger and bigger. People in the village, where he grew up, made fun of him. They said he looked pregnant. After the operation Sanjay explained "Before the operation, life was very tough, but now I'm much better".

Although it was a baby, Sanjay's twin, like all fetus in fetu, was too under-developed to be viable. It could not survive outside it's host.

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Marc Yu Born Genius

Marc Yu is a seven year old like no other. While his friends are putting on their pyjamas to get ready for bed, Marc gets dressed for a classical concert, but not to watch, he's going to play. Marc can play more than forty classical pieces from memory.

What is it that makes gifted children so special? Do they just work harder than others or are they born with brilliant brains?

Marc has been invited to play an audition for Vassily Sinaisky, a world-famous conductor, at the LA Philharmonic. Maestro Sinaisky has seen talent come and go, getting the man's ear for ten minutes is a rare privilege for anyone, let alone a little boy.

Photo by Lawrence23

Professor Ellen Winner, a developmental psychologist, has spent the last fifteen years studying gifted children. When she asks Chloe, Marc's mother, when she discovered his musical talent, she is told t6hat Marc had been at a birthday party when he heard "Mary Had a Little Lamb". He came home and played it on the piano. He was two years old and had never had a piano lesson.

Stories like Marc's seem to defy logic, but science is beginning to shed light on the enigma of God-given talent.

Gottfried Schlaug started playing piano when he was seven years old. He could have had a career in music but, decided to become a neuroscientist instead. Gottfried has scanned the brains of dozens of professional musicians to work out how they produce the brain-power that music demands. He explains: "There's hardly any other skill, any other activity, that would involve this much brain real-estate. The right question would be: which parts of the brain are not active when playing a musical instrument?".

Photo by Lawrence23

Musician's brains look like they're built for this job; several areas of the brain are bigger than normal. One of them is the cerebellum which takes up only 10% of brain volume but contains more nerve cells than the rest of the brain. This tiny organ works harder and faster than any other part of the brain as it orchestrates thousands of muscle fibres in the body.

Another area of brain that is bigger in musicians is the corpus callosum, a strip of tissue connecting the two hemispheres. It's a mission-critical organ in a pianist who needs to precisely synchronise the movements of the left and the right hand sides of the body. But why are musician's brains different? Are they born or made?

Gottfried has teamed up with Ellen Winner to investigate whether the brain shapes music or music shapes the brain. It is a question that has baffled scientists for a very long time. Is it nature or nurture that makes a genius?

Genie Wiley was kept in isolation for many years, as a child. She was rescued at the age of thirteen but never gained the proper power of speech. This taught scientists that once a critical window of brain development had passed, there was no going back.

A growing brain is both vulnerable and extremely malleable. Marc's mother expoited this quality to teach him one of the most complex languages in the world; Cantonese. Stimulation is essential for a growing brain, by the time as baby is born it has already done 12 weeks worth of listening. Very often, a child's first memory is a melody. Chloe recalls: "By the time Marc started talking, he would hum the same symphonies I had been playing while I was pregnant". Chloe certainly didn't waste any time with Marc's education, but is there any point in starting this early?

Photo by Lawrence23

In the late 1960s, America was a divided country seething with tension. In the long hot summer of 67 the ghettos of several major cities erupted into violence. Many African-Americans felt excluded from society; denied access to the American Dream. Politicians tried to stem the tide by pouring money into schooling and social programs. It didn't work, disadvantaged children were still being left behind.

A group of psychologists in North Carolina had an idea that they hoped might solve the problem. Joe Sparling and his team wanted to reach children far younger than they had ever done before. The team went out into deprived neighbourhoods and hand-picked 111 new-born babies for a unique experiment. They called it the Abecederian Project.

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Clever Hans the Math Horse

In the late 1800s, a German high school mathematics instructor named Wilhelm Von Osten was pushing a few scientific envelopes from his home in Berlin. Among other things, he was a student of phrenology, the now discredited theory that one's intelligence, character, and personality traits can be derived based of the shape of one's head. But it was his keen interest in animal intelligence that would ultimately win him fame.

Von Osten firmly believed that humanity had greatly underestimated the reasoning skills and intelligence of animals. To test his hypothesis, he took it upon himself to tutor a cat, a horse, and a bear in the ways of mathematics. The cat was indifferent to his efforts, and the bear seemed outright hostile, but the arab stallion named Hans showed some real promise. With further tutelage, Hans the horse learned to use his hoof to tap out numbers written on a blackboard. Much to Von Osten's delight, jotting a "3" on the blackboard would prompt a tap-tap-tap from his pupil, a feat which Hans could repeat for any number under ten.

Encouraged by this success, Von Osten pressed his student further. The scientist drew out some basic arithmetic problems on his chalkboard, and attempted to train the horse in the symbols' meanings. Hans had no problem keeping up with the curriculum, and soon he was providing the correct responses to a variety of math problems including basic square roots and fractions. Hans was proving to be a clever horse indeed.

Starting in 1891, Von Osten began parading "Clever Hans" all over Germany to show off the horse's mathematical proficiency. As word of the spectacle spread, Hans' free exhibitions began drawing larger and larger crowds of curious onlookers. They were seldom disappointed.

"If the first day of the month is a Wednesday," Von Osten would ask Hans, who had learned to respond to verbal questions, "what is the date of the following Monday?" Six hoof-taps would follow. "What is the square root of sixteen?" Four taps. Von Osten also explained to the astonished crowds that Hans could spell out words with taps, where one tap is an "A", two taps a "B", and so on. Hans would then demonstrate this talent by spelling out the names of people he knew, and responding to simple questions. He could also tap out the time of day. Though he made mistakes occasionally, his accuracy was found to be roughly 89%. By some estimates, Hans' grasp of mathematics was equivalent to a fourteen-year-old's.

Naturally there were many skeptics, particularly after the New York Times featured the crafty horse in a front-page story. Germany's board of education asked to conduct an independent investigation into Hans' abilities, and Von Osten agreed. He was a man of science, after all, and he knew that there was no fraud to expose. The board members assembled a number of scientific minds to join the Hans Commission, including two zoologists, a psychologist, a horse trainer, several school teachers, and a circus manager. Following extensive independent testing, the commission concluded in 1904 that there was no trickery involved in Hans' responses; as far as they could tell, the horse's talents were genuine.

The Hans Commission then passed the investigation on to Oskar Pfungst, a psychologist with some novel ideas on how to best unravel the mystery. Pfungst erected a large tent to house his experiments, thereby removing the contaminating effects of outside visual stimuli. In order to produce a sufficient data set, the scientist compiled a very large list of questions, and carefully outlined the different variables that were to be considered. Thus Pfungst began his interrogation of Hans.

As expected, Hans performed very well when questions were posed by his owner, Von Osten. He also received very high marks for accuracy with other questioners under normal conditions. But when the experiment called for the questioner to stand farther away, something interesting happened: the horse's accuracy diminished somewhat, though it wasn't immediately clear why.

It was the final two variables which proved to be the most revealing. In instances where the questioner didn't know the answer to a question in advance, the accuracy of Hans' responses plummeted to nearly zero. Likewise when the questioner was completely concealed from him. It seemed that Hans' cleverness hinged on his ability to have an up-close, unobstructed view of the person who knew the correct answer. The researchers also found evidence that hounding a horse with questions he can't answer leads to painful horse-bites.

Pfungst continued his experiments, but with a new emphasis on observing the humans interacting with Hans. The psychologist immediately noticed that each questioner's breathing, posture, and facial expression involuntarily changed each time the hoof tapped, showing ever-so-slight increases in tension. Once the "correct" tap was made, that subtle underlying tension suddenly disappeared from the person's face, which Hans apparently took as the cue to stop tapping. Pfungst also noticed that this tension was not present when the questioner was unaware of the correct answer, which left Hans without the necessary feedback.

Though the experiment strongly indicated that the horse probably had no real grasp of math, it did uncover an extraordinary insight. Hans wasn't dipping into a reservoir of intellect to work out the answers, he was merely being receptive to the subtle, unconscious cues which were universally present in his human questioners. There is evidence to indicate that horses may possess an enhanced sensitivity to inconspicuous body language, perhaps as a key part of their social interactions with other horses.

Once he became aware of these cues, Pfungst was able to rival Hans' accuracy by placing himself in the "horse" role, tapping out his answers to researchers' questions and keeping a sharp eye on their body language. Even more interestingly, he discovered that questioners seemed unable to suppress these subtle cues, even when made aware of them.

In the intervening years, it has been found that many animals are sensitive to such cues from their human masters. Today, the term "Clever Hans Effect" is used to describe the influence of a questioner's subtle and unintentional cues upon their subjects, in both humans and in animals. To prevent prejudices and foreknowledge from contaminating experimental results, modern science employs the double-blind method where researchers and subjects are unaware of many details of the experiment until after the results are recorded. For instance, when drug-sniffing dogs undergo training, none of the people present know which containers have drugs in them; otherwise their body language might betray the location and render the exercise useless.

Wilhelm Von Osten never really accepted the Clever Hans explanation, so he and his horse continued to put on their math-and-body-language show throughout Germany for some time. Throughout their career, the pair continued to draw large and enthusiastic crowds. Though Hans the horse knew nothing of math and had a flimsy grasp of German at best, his ability to fool so many people for so long clearly gives him a legitimate claim to cleverness. Considering his gifts in reading humans' unconscious tells, there's also little doubt that with some opposable thumbs and a stack of high society, Hans would have made one hell of a card player.

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Legend of the Crystal Skulls

The crystal skulls are a number of human skull models fashioned from blocks of clear or milky quartz crystal rock, claimed to be pre-Columbian Mesoamerican artifacts by their alleged finders. However, none of the specimens made available for scientific study were authenticated as pre-Columbian in origin. The results of these studies demonstrated that those examined were manufactured in the mid-19th century or later, almost certainly in Europe. Despite some claims presented in an assortment of popularising literature, legends of crystal skulls with mystical powers do not figure in genuine Mesoamerican or other Native American mythologies and spiritual accounts.

The skulls are often claimed to exhibit paranormal phenomena by some members of the New Age movement, and have often been portrayed as such in fiction. Perhaps the most widely known of such portrayals occurs in the film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Crystal skulls have been a popular subject appearing in numerous sci-fi television series, novels, and video games.

A distinction has been made by some modern researchers between the smaller bead-sized crystal skulls, which first appear in the mid-19th century,and the larger (approximately life-sized) skulls that appear toward the end of that century. The smaller crystal skulls may be actual Mesoamerican beads that have been carved in modern times into a skull shape; they may even represent a genuine Mexican Catholic cultural practice, as at least one example has been found attached to the base of a crucifix (reflecting a Christian symbolism of Golgotha, the "place of [the] skull"). The larger crystal skulls have attracted nearly all the popular attention in recent times, and researchers believe that all of these have been manufactured as forgeries in Europe.

Trade in fake pre-Columbian artifacts developed during the late 19th century to the extent that in 1886 Smithsonian archaeologist William Henry Holmes wrote an article called "'The Trade in Spurious Mexican Antiquities"' for Science. Although museums acquired skulls earlier, it was Eugène Boban, an antiquities dealer who opened his shop in Paris in 1870, who is most associated with 19th-century museum collections of crystal skulls. Most of Boban's collection, including three crystal skulls, was sold to the ethnographer Alphonse Pinart, who donated the collection to the Trocadéro Museum, which later became the Musée de l'Homme.

Many crystal skulls are claimed to be pre-Columbian, usually attributed to the Aztec or Maya civilizations. Mesoamerican art has numerous representations of skulls, but none of the skulls in museum collections come from documented excavations. Research carried out on several crystal skulls at the British Museum in 1996 and again in 2004 has shown that the indented lines marking the teeth (for these skulls had no separate jawbone, unlike the Mitchell-Hedges skull) were carved using jeweler's equipment (rotary tools) developed in the 19th century, making a supposed pre-Columbian origin even more dubious. The type of crystal was determined by examination of chlorite inclusions, and is only to be found in Madagascar and Brazil, and thus unknown within the Aztec or Maya territories. The study concluded that the skulls were crafted in the 19th century in Germany.

It has been established that both the British Museum and Paris's Musée de l'Homme crystal skulls were originally sold by the French antiquities dealer Eugène Boban, who was operating in Mexico City between 1860 and 1880. The British Museum crystal skull transited through New York's Tiffany's, whilst the Musée de l'Homme's crystal skull was donated by Alphonse Pinart, an ethnographer who had bought it from Boban.

An investigation carried out by the Smithsonian Institution in 1992 on a crystal skull provided by an anonymous source who claimed to have purchased it in Mexico City in 1960 and that it was of Aztec origin concluded that it, too, was made in recent years. According to the Smithsonian, Boban acquired the crystal skulls he sold from sources in Germany; findings that are in keeping with those of the British Museum.

A detailed study of the British Museum and Smithsonian crystal skulls was accepted for publication by the Journal of Archaeological Science in May 2008. Using electron microscopy and X-ray crystallography, a team of British and American researchers found that the British Museum skull was worked with a harsh abrasive substance such as corundum or diamond, and shaped using a rotary disc tool made from some suitable metal. The Smithsonian specimen had been worked with a different abrasive, namely the silicon-carbon compound carborundum which is a synthetic substance manufactured using modern industrial techniques. Since the synthesis of carborundum dates only to the 1890s and its wider availability to the 20th century, the researchers concluded "[t]he suggestion is that it was made in the 1950s or later".

None of the skulls in museums come from documented excavations. A parallel example is provided by obsidian mirrors, ritual objects widely depicted in Aztec art. Although a few surviving obsidian mirrors come from archaeological excavations, none of the Aztec-style obsidian mirrors are so documented. Yet most authorities on Aztec material culture consider the Aztec-style obsidian mirrors as authentic pre-Columbian objects. Archaeologist Michael E. Smith reports a non peer-reviewed find of a small crystal skull at an Aztec site in the Valley of Mexico. Crystal skulls have been described as "A fascinating example of artifacts that have made their way into museums with no scientific evidence to prove their rumored pre-Columbian origins. Until any crystal skulls are reported in peer-reviewed papers describing their excavation, Occam's Razor suggests that all of them are fabrications.

Some believers in the paranormal claim that crystal skulls can produce a variety of miracles. Ann Mitchell-Hedges claimed that the skull she allegedly discovered could cause visions, cure cancer, that she once used its magical properties to kill a man, and that in another instance, she saw in it a premonition of the John F. Kennedy assassination. In the 1931 play The Satin Slipper, by Paul Claudel, King Philip II of Spain uses "a death's head made from a single piece of rock crystal," lit by "a ray of the setting sun," to see the defeat of his Armada in its attack on England (day 4, scene 4, pp. 243-44).

Claims of the healing and supernatural powers of crystal skulls have no support in the mainstream scientific community. The scientific community at large has found no evidence of any unusual phenomena associated with the skulls nor any reason for further investigation, other than the confirmation of their provenance and method of manufacture.

Another novel and historically unfounded speculation ties in the legend of the crystal skulls with the completion of the current Maya calendar b'ak'tun-cycle on December 21, 2012, claiming the re-uniting of the thirteen mystical skulls will forestall a catastrophe allegedly predicted or implied by the ending of this calendar. An airing of this claim appeared (among an assortment of others made) in The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls, a 2008 program produced for the Sci Fi Channel in May and shown on Discovery Channel Canada in June. Interviewees included Richard Hoagland, who attempted to link the skulls and the Maya to life on Mars, and David Hatcher Childress, proponent of lost Atlantean civilizations and anti-gravity claims.

The alleged associations and origins of crystal skull mythology in Native American spiritual lore, as advanced by neoshamanic writers such Jamie Sams, are similarly discounted. Instead, as Philip Jenkins notes, crystal skull mythology may be traced back to the "baroque legends" initially spread by F.A. Mitchell-Hedges, and then afterwards taken up:

By the 1970s, the crystal skulls [had] entered New Age mythology as potent relics of ancient Atlantis, and they even acquired a canonical number: there were exactly thirteen skulls.
None of this would have anything to do with North American Indian matters, if the skulls had not attracted the attention of some of the most active New Age writers.

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Life Without the Moon

Life is a tenuous thing. Earth is just within Sol's habitable zone, and constantly pelted with solar radiation and cosmic rays. Rocky scraps of cosmic afterbirth constantly cross Earth’s orbit, threatening to eradicate all terrestrial life. In point of fact, it is almost certain that countless Extinction-Level Events would have sterilized the surface of our plucky planet had it not been for our constant companion and benefactor; a body which unwittingly wards away many of the ills that could befall us: the moon.

Luna is unique among the observed celestial bodies; there is no other satellite closer in size and composition to its mother-planet (if one discounts the dwarf-planet Pluto), and the Earth/moon system is the only tidally locked pair. Furthermore, it also happens to be the only moon in the solar system which is circling an intelligent civilization– a factor which may not be a mere coincidence.

It was 4.5 billion years ago last week that the young planetesimal Earth was forming from the sun's accretion disk of dust and boulders. Several other aspiring planets were building up nearby. One particularly promising young protoplanet was making some exemplary progress by loitering in Earth's Lagrange point, allowing it to share Earth's orbit by staying at a gravitationally neutral distance. As the mass of both young Earth and her smaller rival, Thiea increased, the gravitationally stable Lagrange point was insufficient to keep the worldlets apart, and the proto-worlds were drawn together. Theia, approximately Mars-sized by now, accelerated toward and slammed into Earth at an oblique angle. The heavy core of the smaller world didn't have the velocity to escape Earth, but a large swath of the lighter mantle material of both were flung into orbit. Within the year, the moon we know was well-under construction–or so goes the popular theory. No one bothered to record for us the the rate of Earth's spin before the incident, but like a glancing shot off a billiards ball, the Giant Impact certainly made sure it was spinning afterward.

In that era, the moon was much nearer Earth, and would have looked much larger–several times the size of the sun. For a long time the moon retained a molten core and the accompanying magnetic fields which left geological marks on our world. When things were almost settled down, there was an era called Late Planetary Bombardment when both Earth and its companion were pelted by impacts that blew planetary debris around, and left some of Earth's ancient geology on the moon. Over the eons, erosion has scrubbed away all evidence of that ancient time from the Earth, but some of the chunks that were blasted to the moon were preserved in a frozen, unchanged state. Ultimately these remnants of the Earth's violent youth would be found by enterprising humans, such as the infamous Genesis rock collected by the Apollo 15 astronauts.

Observations of the solar system show us that the moon's birth was rather unusual. All of the other worlds either lack satellites or have captured them from other places. Of course the moon isn't Earth's only unusual resident; its surface crawls with all manner of strange and delicate carbon-based life forms. Adherents of the Rare Earth Theory postulate that a large moon such as ours is not merely a benefit for life, but essentially a requirement.

Although our planetary neighbor Mars also technically lies within Sol's habitable zone, there is reason to speculate that life never could get a foothold there because of its axial tilt. Mars' axis can wobble from 10 degrees up to the current 25 degrees, and maybe more. This has sometimes leaned one of the poles so sharply that the ice melted, filling the meager atmosphere with water vapor that froze again on the next season. By introducing such extremes to the weather, the planet would potentially go through phases where sheets of ice were laid on the surface for epochs, then melted away when the axis tilt became more favorable. When the Phoenix Lander lands near a Martian icecap in May, we may get a chance to see evidence of this ice age cycle on the surface. While Earth has had its share of ice-ages, the gravity of the moon has acted as a gyroscope, keeping the Earth's axis steady at 23.5 degrees and sparing us the wild environmental changes Mars faced. This long-term stability has given life a chance to arise amidst a cycle of regular seasonal changes.

A case can also be made that the tides have been invaluable to the evolution of life on our world. The sun alone would cause some tides to occur, though they would be far less than those the moon creates. The surfing would suck, and for many that wouldn't be a life worth living. The higher tides afforded us by Luna have made long swaths of coastline into areas of that are regularly shifted between dry and wet. These variable areas may have been a proving ground for early sea life to reach out of the oceans and test the land for its suitability as a habitat. Areas farther from shore are only dry at the peak of low-tide, and the period of exposure to air increases as one nears shore, allowing for a subtle progression toward a waterless environment. Early life could have taken advantage of this gradual change to adapt to the wildly different demands of surviving outside the ocean.

It's not only water being tugged by the moon's gravity. Perhaps the moon helps keep Earth's core and seas warmer than they would otherwise be. Since the moon circles the Earth once a month, and the Earth is spinning a full turn at a much quicker 24 hours, the moon's gravity is creating drag, hence friction, as it pulls at Earth's surface. This causes several things to happen: first is a perpetual morphing of the crust–like the amateurish kneading of bread–that contributes a clumpy, broken mess that we call plate tectonics.

Even Earth's rotation is slowed by virtue of the Moon's pull. Without the moon, the Earth might rotate much faster, causing a more turbulent atmosphere, and thus unending gales of life-hostile, skirt-blowing winds. As Luna's orbit slowly creeps away from the Earth at 1.5 inches per year, her gravimetric drag will eventually slow the Earth's rotation to match the pace of the moon's orbit. One day will be 9,600 hours long, and the moon will only be visible from one hemisphere, fixed in the sky. Of course, by then the sun should be in an expanding red-giant phase, slowly engulfing its planets. The sun's coronal atmosphere could be creating drag against the moon, slowing it toward an eventual breakup as Earth's gravity tears it apart. The remnants of Luna will fall back to Mother Earth as meteorites, and while it may be a pretty show, it ought to prove bad for property values, and worse for the surf.

If the unlikely set of circumstances which brought forth our moon are as rare as they seem, perhaps ours is the only such planetary system in the entire, vast galaxy; or perhaps in our unfashionable limb of the universe. But every once in a great while, when the time is right, two protoplanets who love each other very much can touch each other in a special way, and make life together. Without that magic, astronomical ritual, we certainly would not be here.

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The Seven Year Old Surgeon

Akrit Pran Jaswal, India's Child Surgeon - Child Genius

A young girl in India badly burned as a toddler, her fingers had fused together and curled into a knotted ball. Her shepherd family could not afford surgery, but they had heard of a remarkable young boy being called the child surgeon. Akrit Jaswal was only seven years old when he operated, successfully, on the eight year old girl to release her fingers.

Akrit Jaswal had a reputation, in the region, for being a medical genius. He has been shown to have an I.Q. of 146, the highest I.Q. of any boy his age in India, a country of over one billion people.

He has focussed this phenomenal intelligence on medicine and now, at the age of twelve, claims to be on the verge of discovering a cure for cancer.

An early developer, Akrit was walking and talking by the time he was 10 months old. He was reading and writing by two, and reading Shakespeare, in English, by the time he was five, and is now talking about his theories for oral gene therapy in the fight against cancer.

He has been sponsored and mentored by Mr B. R. Rahi the Chairman of Secondary Education in Dharamshala. He is studying for a science degree at Chandigarh College and, at twelve years of age, is the youngest student ever accepted by an Indian University.

Akrit's father left the family a year ago, depressed and exhausted by six years battling with Indian bureaucracy to get his son's intellect acknowledged and resources made available for his cancer research.

Is it possible that this young boy knows something the medical profession does not? Throughout history, scientific breakthroughs have come not only from the established, the learned, and the scholarly, but also from single flashes of insight and inspiration.

Akrit is not phased by his fame and is used to meeting government ministers and press representatives. For ordinary people meeting Akrit, it is very different. When he is in town, they gather for an audience. They come with prescriptions and medicines, seeking advice. They come with ailments and injuries for a diagnosis. They come to see a doctor, a healer. They come to see a guru, and because this is India, there is always spiritual dimension.

Akrit may be famous but, will he be the one to unlock the secrets to a cure for cancer. He was invited to Imperial College, London to find out. He will spend two weeks based at Imperial College having his intelligence tested and talking super-mechanisms, genes and therapies with scientists at the cutting-edge of cancer research.

Akrit must convince Professor Mustafa Djamgoz, a world-renowned research biologist, and his colleague Mr Anup Patel, a consultant urological surgeon, that his ideas are realistic and worth pursuing.

The inquisitors become his friends, Mr Patel and Professor Djamgoz are keen to foster Akrit's enthusiasm, keen to protect him from disappointment, and willing to guide him on his way.

Professor Djamgoz says of Akrit: " He is generating ideas based upon what he knows, in an idealistic sort of way, without being in full grip of reality, withou knowing how difficult it is to turn the ideas into practical realities".

Just how intelligent is Akrit? Team Focus, the UK's leading I.Q. analysts agree to test him. For Akrit this was to prove a disappointment. His exceptional results in verbal and numeracy tests were countered by poor practical tests, particularly in the area of pattern matching. Because of this wide range of results Team Focus chose not to give him a final rating.

Rosemary Facer, a childhood psychologist, put forward the theory that Akrit had been an early developer accounting for the good results and because of this early genius he had missed out on later schooling accounting for the poor practical results. These results do not affect what Akrit may achieve, but he needs help, a wise friend to talk to.

The Professor's analysis is that Akrit needs to obsess less and enjoy more. He thinks Akrit shows great potential but it needs to be properly guided.

Akrit returns home to India, slightly maturer, a little more realistic, but this precocious young man is still convinced that he will find a cure for cancer.

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The Man Whose Arms Exploded

Gregg Valentino is in the Guinness Book of Records as the man with the biggest biceps in the World. His arms have a circumference of 28 inches. Gregg followed a 28 year body-building regime without relying on performance enhancing drugs, but this didn't set the record. This came after a further 2 years of intensive training and anabolic steroids to pump his muscles to these extremes. Steroids would be his road to fame, and ultimately to infamy.

In the UK, Dave Talbot is in the gym at five o'clock every morning. He will train for two and a half hours before returning home for breakfast. He will take the kids to school before returning to the gym for another two and a half hour workout. He will do this seven days a week for months on end.

Dave consumes some 12,000 calories a day to fuel his workouts and build his muscles to a toned perfection. This training routine will last for 15 months and it is all for a single body-building competition.

On the day of the competition, after all of his gruelling fitness sessions, he achieves fourth place. Is it enough? Was all that work worth it?

Gregg Valentino became a minor celebrity in America a curiosity who has crossed over from extreme body-building to the outer fringes. Considered by many, including those in body-building circles, to be a freak.

Gregg made a fortune from his training videos demonstrating the power in his drugged-up arms, but he was about to pay the price for his drug abuse.

Dr. Harrison Pope, the author of The Adonis Complex uses the term Bigorexia to describe what he considers to be an obsessive compulsive condition that steroid-fuelled body-building is becoming. Bigorexia was coined by the fitness community as an opposite to anorexia.

After years of steroid injections, Gregg Valentino's arms were like pin-cushions and he became careless reusing needles and failing to ensure they were sterile. He got an infection in the arm. This caused a bad fever and the arm blew up like a balloon filled with pus, like a giant zit.

But Gregg was about to make a bad situation much worse. He decided to drain the haematoma by himself. He set about stabbing the arm with a syringe to draw the pus out.

After 20 minutes of self-mutilation and two tumblers of coagulated blood and gore, Gregg ended up in emergency surgery, and all his body-building efforts disappeared under the surgeon's knife. Steroids had destroyed his body, and he thought things couldn't get any worse.

Steroids are illegal in the USA and Gregg was going to discover this to his cost. Over the years Gregg had not only been using steroids himself, he had been supplying them to others. He was arrested and jailed. He lost everything, his house, his cars, his money, and his gym.

Steve Michalik a former Mr Universe, knows only too well the dangers of steroid misuse. He had won 22 titles including Mr USA, Muscleman USA, and Mr America without resorting to steroids. But following a trip to Europe he succumbed to the attraction of bigger muscles and started anabolic steroids. By the time he was in his mid 40s, Steve had suffered liver failure, had a heart attack and a stroke. He spent time in a mental institution trying to come to terms with what he had done. Now he promotes steroid-free body-building.

As a legacy to his dalliance with steroids, Steve Michalik has been left with a testosterone level of a 12 year old girl and testicles the size of peanuts.

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why oil isn’t dead just yet

Since 2004, the most tracked and talked about price in the world wasn’t the price for an ounce of gold or platinum or silver. It was the cost of a barrel of light sweet crude. Oil accounts for around a third of global energy consumption and it’s used to fuel almost every vehicle we use for transportation. When its price swings, world markets are sent reeling, inflation climbs, the auto and aviation industries face losses and the balance of power in world affairs shifts. But according to Ben Hewitt’s article for Discover, King Oil is in its last days on the throne as a slew of new technologies gets closer and closer to practical reality.

Hewitt isn’t the first or only person to announce that oil is becoming too expensive, too hard to get and causes too many economic and political problems to be a practical fuel for the future. Oil as an ancient energy source in its twilight years is a whole school of thought summarized in the Peak Oil Theory. Over the last two years, Peak Oil was invoked loudly and often as the main culprit behind oil prices rocketing to triple digits and $4 a gallon gas. Wind, solar, natural gas, nuclear power and experimental research into fusion looked more and more feasible because oil’s relentless march upwards raised the competitive costs they had to meet before becoming practical means of generating electricity. But then the recession hit and oil fell back to Earth.

Let’s be clear that $145 a barrel oil was a massive bubble that collapsed as the global recession pummeled the stock markets. Rather than a manifestation of Peak Oil, it was a combination of hedging falling currencies against a commodity and rampant speculation. Reserves grew while the price per barrel shot towards the stratosphere and there was no oil field in danger of going dry anytime soon. It’s inevitable that one day we’ll run out of oil but that day is still far away and it’s not the day we should be worried about. Rather, we should look ahead to 2030 when human population will balloon to 8.1 billion and our energy needs will be 150% of today’s. That’s about 24 terawatts with more than 80% of this power likely to be generated by fossil fuels.

On the surface, it doesn’t seem all that terrible if we break it down by year. We know that Africa and Asia will be responsible for most of the population growth over the next few decades. We also know that their developing economies will require large infrastructures to keep attracting foreign investment and building stable markets. We’ve been getting ready for it since the early 1990s and our global energy output needs to grow by just 2.3% a year to keep up. It’s growing at this rate already and we still have notable reserves which are basically a store for our fossil fuel surplus.

In the big picture, it’s not that simple. We’ll need to start tapping our reserves, open new fields and ensure that every year we’re pumping 2.3% more oil to keep up. This means that profound political power shifts will be in the works. For centuries, the world’s superpowers were nations with the biggest militaries and the most advanced weapons. But what good is a huge army that doesn’t have enough fuel to fight? The new superpowers will be countries with vast oil, gas and coal reserves. The United States will find itself in a tough spot since it has more than 250 years worth of coal but is dependent on imports of gasoline. Iran, Venezuela, Russia and Saudi Arabia will have ever more leverage over Europe, United States and China. Alternative fuels might be a way to keep the political status quo rather than inevitable technological progress.

As with all finite resources, oil will eventually run out. In the meantime, we’ve built much of our modern world on the energy we get from burning it and from its byproducts which we use to make plastics and other consumer goods. King Oil won’t abdicate its throne as new technology comes to take its place. It will be replaced in a long, expensive and politically charged process.

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Weirdest Animal from Madagascar (Aye-aye)

If you shaved an aye-aye and stood him on his hind feet, he would look very much like "Gollum," the J. R. R. Tolkien character from Lord of the Rings.

This strange little creature from Madagascar has amazingly long fingers on his hands (yes, he's a primate), and huge eyes for hunting his food at night.

There is only one species of aye-aye now living, although a much larger one lived in the past but is now extinct. Many scientists and citizen's groups are now working hard to save this animal, which was once considered to be one of the rarest mammals on Earth.

Like the cat during the European Middle Ages, the aye-aye is thought to be an evil creature, and for this reason it is traditionally shot on sight by the human citizens of Madagascar. Unlike the cat, who could survive it's persecution because of it's large numbers and wide range, the aye-aye lives only on it's island, and cannot easily regenerate it's numbers.

It is almost impossible to see the animals now because they are nocturnal and rare. It is even more difficult to start a successful breeding program in zoos.

When zoologists first studied this animal they were not sure what to call it - it has sharp, continuously growing front teeth like a rabbit or rat, and for this reason they thought the aye-aye might be a rodent. It has ears that belong on a bat, and a tail that belongs on a squirrel; it's fingers don't look like anything that you would expect to find on any animal at all. It is now know to be a lemur who lives in moist forests on the eastern side of Madagascar, eating insect larvae, ramy nuts, and some vegetation.

Their middle fingers are amazingly long and thin, and have been aptly described as "skeletal." They use this long narrow finger for digging insect larvae from trees. They build nests high in the trees, but often come down and walk on all four limbs on the ground. The aye-aye will mate at any time of the year, and will nurse her young for about seven months..

Gerald Durrell, founder of the Wildlife Trust, wrote an engaging book called the Aye-aye and I, which tells about his experiences in Madagascar while studying and capturing several of these elusive critters for a breeding program. He describes the aye-aye this way: "a Walt Disney witch's black cat with a touch of E.T. thrown in'.

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Thumbelina the world's smallest horse

She may be small, a mere 17 inches and weighing only 60 pounds. But she is all horse.

Born as a dwarf to a miniature horse, Thumbelina is officially the world’s smallest horse.

She may never aspire to be a champion show-jumper – she is so tiny she would find it hard to jump over a bucket.

But these things matter little to the feisty Thumbelina, who has been officially recognized as the world’s smallest horse.

That title was conferred on her in 2006 when the five-year-old entered the Guinness Book of Records.

The real-life My Little Pony was born on an American farm to a couple who specialize in breeding miniature horses.

Normally these horses weight about 250lb and rise to a height of 34 inches when they are fully grown.

But from the day she was born it was clear that tiny Thumbelina would never grow to that size.

She weighed in at only 8lb – the size of a new-born baby - when she was born. Eventually she grew to just 60lb.

Her amazing size has been explained as dwarfism. This makes her a miniature of a miniature.

She may be a mini-horse, but small means beautiful as far as her owners, the Goessling family in Goose Creek farm in St. Louis, are concerned.

She likes to hang out with the cocker spaniels rather than the other horses on their 150-acre farm.

“When she was born, she was so small we thought she wasn’t going to make it. She looked very ill. We feared the worse.

“Because her legs are proportionally smaller than her body and her head, she has to wear orthopaedic fittings to straighten them out a lot of the time.

“But we love her and wouldn’t want her any other way,” said Michael Goessling, whose parents Kay and Paul bred the miniature horses.

She only measures up to the shins of the normal-sized horses in the paddock.

Michael’s parents have bred hundreds of miniature horses, but they have never had one as small as Thumbelina. She has become something of a celebrity in her home town in America.

She lives on a cup of grain and a handful of hay, served twice a day.

She is expected to live to the age of 17 years because of her size – normal horses live for about 35 years.

“She was just a complete fluke and we call her a mini mini. She is too precious to sell. I think my parents would sell me before they part with Thumbelina. She has that special Wow factor, which you only get when you see how small she really is,” said Michael.

While she has the ability to get pregnant and give birth, the Goessling family have decided not to allow this to happen.

There could be complications during the pregnancy, they believe, so it is better to avoid the risks. And also they don‘t feel it is right that the gene which creates dwarfism in horses be carried on through future generations.

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The Worlds Largest Motor Cycle

Gregory Dunham from the USA has constructed the worlds largest rideable motorcycle that is 3.429 m (11 ft 3 in) tall to the top of handlebars, 6.187 m (20 ft 4 in) long and weighs 2.948 tons (6,500 lb). It is powered by a 8.2 litre (502 cu in) V8 engine and has tyres that are 1.88 m (74 in) tall. The top speed is 65 mph with an economy of 6 miles per gallon.

Dunham built the bike over three years at a cost of $300,000. "After a while, I had to do something in life," said Greg Dunham, 49, adding "I've always been an idea guy."

In February 2005 Guinness World Records awarded him a certificate he recieved on June 15 for officially having the world's tallest rideable motorcycle.

Dunham steers it from a cage below the handlebars as it would be impossible to straddle the bike in a normal riding position. Technically he drives the bike rather than rides the bike.

"People love it," Dunham says. "Fifteen guys came from out of nowhere to see it. One of the guys said, ‘Build me one!’ People love it!"

Photo by johncare

Dunham started building the motorcycle he calls "Dream Big" in 2002. It wasn't easy. He twice had problems with the transmission that made him mad enough to want to set the bike on fire. Dunham collected the parts to build the bike from online shops and auto wrecking yards. He built the bike himself relying on the knowledge gained when he worked in car body and chassis repair at a garage.

Monster made its public debut in February 2005 at 'Bike Week' an annual motorcycle event in Daytona Beach, Florida. The bike was placed third in the unusual class and was featured in a film by Discovery Europe.

Most recently, 'Monster' raised $433 for the American Red Cross for Hurricane Katrina victims during a September 11th fund-raiser on Pacific Avenue.

Photo by stkone

1.Powered by a 502 cubic inch V8 with 500 HP/ 600 ft.lbs of torque. Steel heads, ported and polished . Engine blueprinted and balanced. Medium lift roller camshaft, high performance 870 cfm carburetor, H.O. electronic ignition and wires, custom ceramic coated big tube headers attached to 5 inch diameter chrome exhaust, no mufflers!

2. Transmission is automatic with 2 speeds forward and reverse, all heavy duty components including a 2500 rpm stall convertor. Drive shaft driven through one gear box with the final drive using a custom made spooled Dana 60 rear end using all the strongest components to turn the special made rear main axle.

3. Power disc brakes with two 12 inch vented rotors on the front and one 15 inch vented rotor on the rear using two calipers for maximum braking. All brake pads are non asbestos, utilizing the brake material with the best grip.

4. Power steering is provided by a high performance rock crawling steering gear box powered by a heavy duty chrome pump powered by the engine.

5. A separate electric powered hydraulic system powers the rear wheelie bar/ kickstand for its raising and lowering capabilities. The bar is also equipped with solid rubber wheels and hydraulic rams that will push or pull over 10,000 pounds each. The wheelie bar is used in place of the leg support you would ordinarily use on a normal motorcycle and can be raised after the giant bike is moving forward about 20 mph. Not something I do often due to the costly nature of a crash and danger to others.

Photo by stkone

6. Fuel tank is a polished aluminum fuel cell which has a foam liner and only holds about 3 gallons high octane fuel. Why so small? How much fuel do you want to sit on? Even at 1 mile to the gallon it will cover most events.

7. Fuel tank pods and fenders are all custom hand laid fiberglass taking weeks of work starting with only a basic design. The fuel tank pods are easily interchangeable and we do have a second set which vinyl advertising can be applied to so a sponsors name can be applied to the bike. We are always looking for sponsors and can adjust the bike according to the sponsors advertising.

8. The seat is metal tubing framed covered with exterior vinyl to last in the elements. The seat has gas assist shocks to help raise and lower the seat slowly. The inside is cut out so 1-3 people can stand there for photo’s or parade use.


9. Drivers compartment is set up to vaguely meet some monster truck specifications. Using the bike frame to encompass the seated driver, acting as a full roll cage for the driver protection. A full race seat with a 5 way seat belts were added but because of the limited visibility another steering wheel and brake pedal was added so the driver could stand up to drive the bike with 360 degrees of visibility. Of course the upper driving position is only for slow safe driving. The drivers compartment is also fitted with all the necessary gauges, power switches and controls at hand to operate the monster bike

10. The frame is a one of a kind, custom hand built and designed just for the monster bike. Months of work was put into the mild tubing construction, configuring countless angles, fitting all the components, making sure it was strong in all the right places. Countless feet of wire was used to construct the frame. Each part was carefully fit together to form the perfect alignment to track properly. Which was quite a task considering the size of the materials and I had to do all the work myself including the welding. Eventually all the parts fit together like a glove then came the weeks of labor to prep the frame assembly for the custom black powder coating. Special racks had to be made to hold all of the forks, triple clamps, cross members, mechanical parts and the frame just for the powder coating process. The process took hours just to clean all the components removing the excess sand from the sand blasting process and metal finishing the rest. In the end they turned out beautiful and the powder coating has really held up well.

11. The Custom Paint materials were provided by Hot Hues, the custom paint division of Dupont. After prepping the body work for painting they were delivered to Creative Images located at 1024 Industrial Way #k Lodi, Ca. 95240 (209) 339-0735 The owner Rick Valdez came highly recommended by everyone I talked to in the hot rod shows. We talked and I decided to let him paint it with his own design. When I went to pick up the parts I was amazed at how they turned out plus the paint scheme blended with the bike perfectly. It was beautiful! Rick said that even though the Dupont paint was easy to use the overall project took him over a 100 hours to complete! The custom realistic flames were freehand airbrushed using a white and yellow ground. The largest orange color was based with a silver to gold fade so in the proper lighting it has an infinite color effect and is highlighted by the flames and black crystallized marbling effect. Even the name Dream Big! really stands out in the sea of molten orange candy color top coat. With names like Psycho Silver, Snow Storm, Smooth Yellow, Crystallized Black, Molten Orange Candy, Gold, and topped off with the depth of a great clear coat it had to turn out great!

12. Builder Information. Gregory Dunham from Stockton, Ca. has a motorcycle background starting at age 9 when he rode bikes on a farm he lived on. Due to the large number of equipment on the farm he received a lot of mechanical experience which was eventually used to design and build the giant motorcycle. After school hours and week ends, at about age 11 he work daily at his families body shop even helping to repair damaged frames. The Dunham family has a vast history of metal working dating as far back as the early 1900’s.
Even at the age of 14, Gregory’s hobby was motorcycles and would spend hours repairing and prepping his bike for the local motocross races where if he didn’t crash he usually finished on the podium. In high school shop class and welding was taken but other than that no other mechanical related classes were attended so most of his mechanical and engineering ability comes from his many hours of experience accompanied by using a common sense approach.
Obviously it can work! Before building 'Dream Big' Gregory has worked repairing all types of frames, major collision work, specialty car work, rebuilt totaled cars and trucks as a side line, remodeled his houses, owned his own business, built the worlds tallest ride-able motorcycle and has full support from his wife of 30 yrs.

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The man with no face

A victim of horrific facial disfigurement - known as "the man with no face" - has been given new hope by the advancement of medical science.

Jose Mestre, from Lisbon, Portugal, has been losing his face to a huge growth for the past 35 years, distorting it out of all recognition - and it's still growing.

The tumor on 51-year-old Jose's face is a collection of blood vessels that have expanded, producing a raised red area on the skin.

Jose was born with a strawberry-coloured birthmark on his upper lip. At puberty it began growing, eventually smothering his lips, nose and one of his eyes. Now it is 33cm long and weighs 3kg.

But Jose's religious faith - as a Jehovah's Witness he refuses to accept a blood transfusion - has prevented him from having surgery to remove the growth.

Jose's rare condition was the subject of a Discovery Channel TV documentary 'The Man With No Face', part of the 'My Shocking Story' series.

It reveals how top medical experts in London have now held out hope of helping Jose, a well-known figure around the streets of Lisbon.

A leading British surgeon has offered to treat Jose using ultrasound waves to coagulate the blood before the operation.

This should remove the risk of heavy bleeding - satisfying his religious beliefs about blood transfusions in the process.

Dr Iain Hutchison, of St Bartholomew's in London, is confident an operation with a harmonic scalpel could make him look a lot more normal.

Discovery Channel said: "Surrounded by a loving family, it seems incredible that he has not been treated and his face was allowed to grow so big. However, through years of medical misinformation, some misdiagnosis, lack of finances, and reluctance to undergo treatment due to religious beliefs, the growth has continued to obliterate his face."

My Shocking Story follows Jose on a journey through Europe to seek medical advice for one last chance to stop his face from suffocating him.

In this journey of a lifetime he travels by train, via Paris, to Britain, to meet the top experts in London. He goes through a series of tests, consultations, and meets other patients with a similar affliction. In London he also spends time with his sister Guida and the rest of his family, enjoys being a tourist in London, while making the biggest decision of his life.

Jose's dream is to live a long and normal life. Following the showing of the Discovery documentary he continues to adhere to his 'no blood transfusion' religious principles. But he has agreed to go back to the London hospital in 2008, when doctors hope to carry out specialist surgery to begin removing parts of his tumor, without the need for blood transfusions.

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The First Head Transplant

In the 1950s, at the height of the cold war, Stalin turned his attention to medicine as a way to advance technology and put the USSR ahead of the west.

To this end, just outside Moscow, Stalin established secret medical laboratories to explore and develop new concepts. Scientists were encourage to experiment freely in the search for the secrets to prolonging life. Many of these tests were carried out on animals. Organs were removed from the corpses and kept alive with machines. Dogs were put to death and subsequently brought back to life.

Vladimir Demikhov, a veteran of the Red Army hospitals in World War 2, believed it was possible to transplant organs like the heart and lungs in human beings. Even in the science-mad 50s this sounded far-fetched.

Vladimir Demikhov

However, Demikhov proved it could be done, by transplanting the heart and lungs from one dog to another. His experiments laid the ground-work for future medical success in humans, but his work never received the recognition it deserved. Demikhov was preparing plans for a human heart transplant, 16 years before the first one was actually achieved.

One night in 1954, Demikhov undertook an experiment that stunned the world. He took two dogs, one fully grown, the other a puppy. He, and his team of surgeons, operated on them through the night. The following morning Demikhov unveiled his achievement. It was a creature straight out of science-fiction.

He had stitched the head and upper-body of the puppy onto the neck of the larger dog, connecting their blood-vessels and windpipes. Soviet propaganda trumpeted his achievement. In America, this caught the attention of an ambitious young scientist: Robert White.

For an America in the grip of cold-war paranoia, the prospect of Russian two-headed dogs was too much to ignore. The United States would soon begin it's own head-transplant programme.

Robert White was born in Minnesota, in 1926. Like Demikhov, he was a veteran of World War 2. After the war, White attended Harvard Medical School, where he studied to be a brain surgeon.

In 1960, the US Government, eager to stay ahead of the Russians in all aspects of medical science, helped White establish a specialist laboratory at the County Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. Here he set about creating a world-leading brain research centre.

By day, White operated on patients with all kinds of brain injuries and illnesses. His surgical skills were renowned. But, as a scientist, it was the mysteries of the brain he wanted to unlock. His ambition was to be the first person, in the world, to isolate the brain. To take it out of the skull, to study it, and to keep it alive throughout.

White was convinced it was possible to remove the brain from the skull and keep it alive. In 1962, he achieved a world's-first by successfully removing an animal's brain and keeping the brain alive. In 1964, he came up with a more audacious plan, to transplant the brain of one animal into the body of another and study it from there.

How the transplanted Brain was located

He removed the brain of one dog and transplanted it into the neck of a second dog. The brain was connected to the blood supply of the host animal and electrodes were put in place to monitor the brain's activity. This begged the question: "If the brain is alive, is it conscious?" It was a question White could not answer.

White's work was not unnoticed in the Soviet Union, and, unusually, there followed a number of visits by the Russians to the Ohio facility and a number of reciprocal visits by White to Russia.

One person that White was keen to meet, was tha man who had inspired him years before - Vladimir Demikhov. Demikhov had continued his work with organ transplants and had revolutionised heart surgery. However, by 1966 he had fallen foul of the authorities, who thought his methods outlandish.

Following his visits to Russia, White returned with ideas to prove a transplanted brains consciousness. He had learned of experiments carried out by the Soviets where the severed head of a dog was kept alive and displayed cognitive reactions.

Robert White decided that if he could transplant a head from one monkey to another, then it would be apparent of the brain activity represented awareness. It took him three years to plan the surgery. He knew that this would be, to some, morally offensive.

In order to keep the head alive the the blood-flow from monkey B's body had to be transfused to monkey A's head via a network of plastic tubes. The A head was brought onto the B body and the blood vessels were connected together, but the spinal cord was left, it's impossible to reconnect nerve threads once they are broken.

Connecting the head

When the surgery was complete and the monkey came out of the anaesthetic it could move it's facial muscles, it could be fed and follow movements with it's eyes. Of course, with a severed spinal cord it was paralysed from the neck down, but the operation had been a success.

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The “Wow!” signal

August 15, 1977. Jerry Ehman is analyzing computer printouts from the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University. He is not being paid for his work because he is a volunteer but he believes strongly that the work is important and he dutifully pours over each transcript. He taps his pencil against the table, sips his coffee and adjusts his glasses as he flips through each page. Masking the mechanical hum of the instruments in the lab a small transistor radio picks up the Cleveland Indians game against Oakland; the Indians are up 7-1 in the top of the 5th. Outside his window a grounds keeper is mowing the commons and the smell of warm, freshly cut grass filters in through the air conditioning unit.

No runs score in the fifth. The radio plays an ad for the Star Wars movie. Jerry separates each page into two piles - one for further investigation and another, much larger pile for trash. Most of the signals are just background noise, the signals of distant stars and interference printed off as 1’s and 2’s in vertical columns. The more interesting signals usually turn out to be pulsars, dying stars emitting massive amounts of electromagnetic radiation like a lighthouse with a lamp that can rotate as quickly as once every 33 milliseconds and be seen halfway across the universe. Sometimes the telescope picks up terrestrial noise or a weather satellite as it passes overhead. To an untrained eye this could seem like an extra-terrestrial signal but Jerry has analyzed thousands of signals and is not easily fooled.

The Indians leave the bottom of the 6th inning still up 7-1. A couple of research scientists outside his office door wave at Jerry as they pass by. He thinks about getting lunch soon, maybe grab a beer too. Then near then bottom of the stack amidst all the 1’s and 2’s he spots a 6 and circles it with his pencil. Further down is another 6 followed by the vertical series “AEQUJ5? with a 6 and 7 off to the right. On the radio Oakland scores a run at the top of the 7th but Jerry is no longer listening to the game. He checks the printout again. He’s stopped tapping his pencil against the desk and has forgotten about that beer. He quickly looks up to see if the scientists are still outside his door but he’s alone and even the grounds keeper is just a distant shadow at the far end of the commons. Without thinking he writes the word “Wow!” in the margin.

30 years later this signal has never been heard again. Was it a fluke, a glitch, a terrestrial signal being bounced off space debris or was it contact? Dr. Jerry Ehman did state the possibility of the signal coming from Earth “We should have seen it again when we looked for it 50 times. Something (?) suggests it was an Earth-bound signal that simply got reflected off a piece of space debris.” Countering his own skepticism he has stated that since the signal was transmitted at the protected frequency of 1420MHz and due to the unlikely nature of such a signal being bounced off of debris at that declination he still can’t rule out the nature of the signal being extra-terrestrial in nature. “It was the most significant thing we had seen.” he has been quoted as saying.

In 1974 we humans sent our own signal to the stars. Using the powerful Arecibo Radio Telescope the message “was sent only once, over a period of about three minutes, on a narrow beam directed toward a group of about 300,000 stars called the Great Cluster in Hercules, Messier 13. The globular cluster is 25,000 light-years away in our galaxy, the Milky Way. So far, moving at the speed of light, the message has traveled only one thousandth of the distance, or about 147 trillion miles. There are stars closer to our solar system than that, but none of them is in the path of the message.” The chances of an alien civilization “tuning” into this broadcast are pretty slim since the globular cluster it was aimed at will have moved out of the way by the time the signal reaches it.

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