Fresh Bigfoot mystery as police admit they are baffled by giant decomposed foot found in Massachusetts wood

 

Two young boys stumble across a giant, decomposing foot in the woods, leaving local police to wonder whether the grisly find is evidence of the fabled Bigfoot.

But that's exactly what has happened in Massachusetts, U.S., where tests are being carried out on the mysterious remains amid speculation over exactly what kind of creature it belonged to.


Big foot? The giant decomposing foot was discovered by two young boys in woodland in Massachusetts, U.S.

According to a report on Discovery.com, the boys found the decomposing foot in woods in Quincy last month.

Baffled officers at the Lakeville Police Department sent the foot to medical examiners to see if they can shed any more light on its origin.

'On March 29, Sgt Steven Leanues picked up what appears to be a decomposed foot that the boys found in the woods off Pantheon Road,' it said, citing the Patriot Ledger newspaper.

'Police Chief Frank Alvihiera sent it to the medical examiner, who determined it is not human, although it appears to have five toes.'
Sasquatch: Roger Patterson claimed to have caught Bigfoot on camera in California in 1967
The legendary creature was immortalised in the film Bigfoot and the Hendersons

 

Fact or fiction: There have been countless reported sightings - such as this footage captured in California in 1967 - of the mysterious creature, which was immortalised in the film Bigfoot and the Hendersons

 
Scene of the find: The woodland where the rotting foot was found

Also known as Sasquatch, Bigfoot is the name given to the hairy, ape-like creature that some believe live in forests in North America.

Sightings of the beast have been reported over decades by people who have pointed variously to mysterious sightings, inexplicably huge footprints, and giant nest-like structures as evidence that the elusive creature does in fact exist.

Believers who claim to have spotted the legendary creature - which was immortalised in the 1987 film Bigfoot and the Hendersons - say it stands between 6ft and 10ft tall, is covered in reddish brown fur, and has a distinctive, unpleasant odour.

While fans are likely to seize upon the find as further proof of the beast's existence, sceptics might predict the tests will reveal the foot belonged not to Bigfoot, but to a big bear.

 

A disappearing island..?



Last year, a group of Australian researchers "undiscovered" an island the size of Manhattan in the South Pacific.

A mysterious place called Sandy Island had popped up on maps, northwest of New Caledonia. It even showed up as a black polygon on Google Earth. But when scientists sailed there last November, they found open water instead of solid ground.

In an obituary for the island published this month, the researchers explained why the phantom landmass had been included on some maps for more than a century, pointing to some human errors and a possible pumice raft.

Sandy Island was first recorded by the whaling ship Velocity in 1876 and first mentioned on a British Admiralty chart in 1908. But future expeditions failed to find the island, and it was removed from some official hydrographic charts by the 1970s.

However, the errant island stuck on some maps and then crept into digital databases like the widely used World Vector Shoreline Database, which was developed by the U.S. military.

"During the conversion from hard-copy charts to digital formats the 'Sandy Island' error was entrenched," said Maria Seton, of the University of Sydney. (Seton was chief scientist on an expedition to study plate tectonics on the RV Southern Surveyor when the "undiscovery" was made.)

"We all had a good giggle at Google as we sailed through the island," Steven Micklethwaite, a scientist at the University of Western Australia who was on the voyage, told the Sydney Morning Herald at the time of the undiscovery. "Then we started compiling information about the seafloor, which we will send to the relevant authorities so that we can change the world map."
Floating pumice in the South Pacific.

 Taken in the afternoon on July 19, 2012, this NASA MODIS image reveals the Havre Seamount eruption, including the gray pumice, ash-stained water and the volcanic plume.

Captured the moment of the birth of a black hole


 

Lost neutrinos may help set off weak flashes of light that signal a black hole's birth.

It's thought that very massive stars explode when they die, and the stuff left behind collapses into either a neutron star or a black hole. But models of dying giant stars don't reliably produce supernova explosions, says Elizabeth Lovegrove of the University of California, Santa Cruz. "Some stars are harder to blow up than others," she says.

Previous work suggested that most of the stars that form black holes implode instead, making them hard to spot. "Is it possible for a star to just disappear inside a black hole without a trace?" wondered Stan Woosley, also at UCSC.
Neutrino exodus

Lovegrove and Woosley realised the key to seeing an imploding star may lie in the large number of neutrinos released from a dying star's core. Without the neutrinos, the core suddenly becomes lighter. According to their model, this change sends a shock wave through the star's outer layers, which then fly off, glowing brightly as they do.

In a separate study, Anthony Piro of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena calculated what would happen to the released gas in the first few days after the star's collapse. He found that the flash of light from a dying supergiant star would be weaker than a supernova, but bright enough for us to see and identify with current and future telescopes.

Christopher Kochanek, an astronomer at Ohio State University who was not involved with the current research, is excited at the prospect: "What would beat seeing a black hole form? How much cooler can you get?"

Cat circus reopens in Moscow

Cat fanciers, take note: the world's only cat circus has reopened in Moscow.

The acrocats cross tightropes, scamper atop rocking horses, and even deign to get their paws dirty with a little comedy at the Moscow Cat Theater.

The theater, founded by Yuri Kuklachev and his son Dmitri in 1990, boasts 120 feline stars (and a few human assistants). Some of the marquee acts include Catnappers, Cat Clowns and Cats from the Universe, the Daily Mail reported.

The theater's director, Dmitri Kuklachev, says the cats participate willingly. "The animals feel good and each of them has found its place. That's great because it shows that the atmosphere here is favorable for them," Kuklachev told New Tang Dynasty Television.

The theater had been closed for renovations.

April, the month of violence ..?



 After Monday's bombing at the Boston Marathon, many people casting around for an explanation have focused on the date: April 15, a holiday in Massachusetts and the middle of a month with a history of violence.

It's not yet known whether the perpetrator or perpetrators of the bombing, which killed three, chose April 15 for its associations with tax day or with Massachusetts' Patriots' Day, a commemoration of the first battles of the Revolutionary War. The month could simply be a coincidence, given that the Boston Marathon, always held on the third Monday of April, was a convenient target.

Nevertheless, some have speculated about the symbolism. On NBC, reporter Tom Llamas told Matt Lauer that "over the last 20 years in this country several terrorist attacks and school shootings have taken place around this time of the year." He cited the Virginia Tech shooting, which took place April 16, 2007; the Columbine school shooting, which occurred April 20, 1999, and the Oklahoma City bombing, which took place on April 19, 1995. [History of Human Aggression: 10 Ways Combat Has Evolved]

April violence?

It's true that some dates in April have special significance to right-wing extremist fringes — and these dates can feed on one another. Timothy McVeigh chose to carry out the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19 because it was the anniversary of the end of the 1993 Waco siege. That siege occurred when Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms officials attempted to execute a search warrant on a compound of Branch Davidians in Texas. The siege lasted 50 days and ended with a deadly fire that killed 76 on April 19.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Columbine shooters, left journals behind indicating they were inspired by McVeigh (bombs the pair set to go off in the school's cafeteria and kitchen failed to explode). The pair may have initially planned to carry out the massacre on April 19, only to be delayed a day. There is also speculation that Harris and Klebold chose April 20 deliberately, because it is Adolf Hitler's birthday.

There is no evidence that Seung-Hui Cho, the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech mass shooting, planned the date symbolically. In his suicide manifesto, Cho did mention "martyrs like Eric and Dylan," indicating that he felt a link to the Columbine killers.

Not-so-special month

While April does have a history, it's hardly a statistical outlier. The National Counterterrorim Center, which tracks both international and domestic terrorism, reveals a worldwide history of attacks on almost every day of the year.

 


In the United States, terrorist attacks or attempted attacks occur year-round as well. Eric Robert Rudolph bombed Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta in July 1996. An Austin man angry over federal taxes flew a small airplane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas, in February 2010, killing himself and one other person. "Shoe bomber" Richard Reid attempted to bring down an American Airlines flight in December 2001. "Underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab made his attempt to bring down an airplane on Christmas day in 2009. And the worst terrorist attacks on U.S. soil took place, of course, on September 11.

Mass shootings, which are not typically classified as terrorism, are similarly scattered. Columbine and Virginia Tech may have happened in April, but the shooting in Tucson, Ariz., that wounded then-congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords occurred in January. The Newtown school shooting in Connecticut was a mid-December disaster.

A list of mass shootings since 1980 compiled by Mother Jones magazine reveals that six occurred in April, comparable to other months: eight in December, five in November, four in July, and six in March, to name a few examples.

 

Do earthquakes threaten Iran's nuclear facilities?



A magnitude 7.8 earthquake has rocked Iran, a week after another major quake struck the country.

How bad was today's earthquake?

According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), the quake struck at 15:14 local time in Sistan and Baluchestan Province in the south-east of the country. A magnitude of 7.8 marks it as a major quake. Tremors were felt as far away as India.

"The earthquake was probably a result of normal faulting within the Arabian plate as it is subducted under the Eurasian plate along the Makran coast of Iran and Pakistan," says Brian Baptie of the British Geological Survey.

So far it is unclear how many people have been killed; the BBC suggests at least 40. The USGS says the focus of the quake was 82 kilometres below the surface. Such deep quakes are less damaging than shallower ones.

 

Sistan and Baluchestan Province is a particularly poor and desolate part of Iran. It is sparsely populated, with many people living in vulnerable mud-brick houses. Many of these buildings have apparently collapsed. The remoteness of the area means it could take days or weeks to find out how many have died.

Is this linked to last week's earthquake?

Today's quake comes a week after a magnitude 6.3 quake that struck Bushehr Province in the south-west of Iran on 9 April. Although it was a smaller quake, at least 37 people were killed.

The two quakes were 1000 kilometres apart, says seismologist Jana Pursley of the USGS. "I wouldn't call them related right now," she says. Iran is a tectonically active country, and earthquakes are common.

Is there a danger to Iran's nuclear facilities?

As far as we know, today's quake was far from Iran's nuclear facilities. Many of these are in the centre of country, particularly near the capital Tehran, or in the west.

Last week's south-western quake occurred close to Iran's only nuclear power station, in Bushehr. Iranian officials said that the plant was undamaged and no radioactive material escaped.

Nuclear power stations generally cope quite well with earthquakes, says Michael Bluck of Imperial College London. They are built on thick slabs of concrete that cushion them, and backup generators are used to keep the reactors cool in the event of an accident.

Iran does have other nuclear facilities but little is known about them.

Didn't the Fukushima disaster show that earthquakes are a risk to nuclear power stations?

Fukushima rode out the earthquake safely but the Japanese disaster was a reminder that nuclear power stations are vulnerable to tsunamis.

When the Tohoku earthquake struck Japan in 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors automatically shut down. The real problems started when a massive tsunami swept over the sea wall. This knocked out the backup generators, leaving the reactors without their cooling systems. The reactors then overheated, there were explosions, and radioactive material escaped.

Further hints of dark matter detected



Hints of dark matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up perhaps 85 percent of the matter in the universe, may have been observed by scientists.

But researchers are far from saying they've discovered the source of dark matter.

"We're not claiming anything," warned Blas Cabrera, a Stanford University physicist speaking here yesterday(April 15) at a meeting of the American Physical Society.

The new results come from the Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS), which takes place deep underground in the Soudan mine in northern Minnesota.

In this subterranean laboratory, researchers chill germanium and silicon to incredibly cold temperatures (near absolute zero, which is minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 273.15 degrees Celsius). The chilled environment is ideal for directly detecting dark matter particles. If one passes through, hitting a frigid atom nucleus, it releases charge and heat that the scientists can detect with supersensitive instruments.

The experiment detected three events that might suggest a weakly interacting massive particle, or WIMP, passing through. WIMPs are one possible candidate that explain dark matter, which emits no light but interacts with the universe through its gravity.

However, the signals detected could also be statistical hiccups. Scientists would expect to see three or more of these WIMP-like events 5.4 percent of the time simply due to random fluctuations in the experiment. But the fluctuations detected by the experiment are in a similar energy range, which is less likely to be a random accident. In fact, the signal is 99.81 percent more likely to be WIMP than simply background fluctuations, Cabrera said.

But physicists are precise and standards for claiming a discovery are even higher than these probabilities.

The finding "does not rise anywhere near the level of discovery, nor does it rise anywhere near what we would call 'evidence for,'" Cabrera said. It is, however, a "region of interest" for future study.

 


A prereview version of the paper reporting this region of interest is available on the physics preprint website arXiv.

If the signals turn out to be evidence of WIMPs as dark matter, they suggest a particle with a mass of about 8 giga-electronvolts, or GeVs (one GeV equals 1 billion electron volts).

That mass is consistent with earlier CDMS results as well as another dark-matter-hunting experiment called CoGeNT at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Cabrera said, but it contradicts preliminary results seen at the international XENON Dark Matter Project, a major experiment located in Italy.

Researchers are zeroing in on dark matter from multiple angles. Earlier this month, NASA scientists announced that they'd seen hints of dark matter from indirect measurements taken on the International Space Station. The detector, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, detected 400,000 positrons, which are the antimatter "twins" of electrons. These particles may have been created when dark matter particles collided and annihilated each other.