As reported in NatGeo, it's no illusion: Science has found a way to make not just objects but entire events disappear, experts say.
According to new research by British physicists, it's theoretically possible to create a material that can hide an entire bank heist from human eyes and surveillance cameras.
"The concepts are basically quite simple," said Paul Kinsler, a physicist at Imperial College London, who created the idea with colleagues Martin McCall and Alberto Favaro.
Unlike invisibility cloaks—some of which have been made to work at very small scales—the event cloak would do more than bend light around an object.
Instead this cloak would use special materials filled with metallic arrays designed to adjust the speed of light passing through.
In theory, the cloak would slow down light coming into the robbery scene while the safecracker is at work. When the robbery is complete, the process would be reversed, with the slowed light now racing to catch back up.
If the "before" and "after" visions are seamlessly stitched together, there should be no visible trace that anything untoward has happened. One second there's a closed safe, and the next second the safe has been emptied.
The concept of an event cloak "is definitely an interesting idea and great fun," said invisibility researcher Ulf Leonhardt, a physicist at the University of St. Andrews in the U.K. who wasn't part of the study team.
Steve Cummer, a cloaking specialist at Duke University, calls the concept "interesting and exciting," but he thinks that actually making such a cloak would be "really, really challenging."
"All of the material parameters need to be time-varying in a very specific way," Cummer said by email.
Currently, nobody knows how to do that except in fiber optics, in which the speed of a signal can be varied by a few percent by changing the intensity of the light.
"You can use an intense control beam to slow a signal down," Kinsler said. In that way, an event occurring inside a fiber optic cable—such as an electrical signal moving from "on" to "off"—could be hidden from view.
"You would see the fiber, but some event occurring in the fiber could be cloaked," he said. Such a proof of concept, he added, could be possible within a few years.
There are still a few hitches to address, though, before attempting such an experiment, according to the University of St. Andrews's Leonhardt.
For instance, being able to cloak an event lasting more than a few femtoseconds—one-millionth of a nanosecond—would require light from an immensely powerful laser, he said.
"The experiment is not entirely impossible, but it is at the limit of what one can do with present technology in an ordinary university laboratory," Leonhardt said.
Study co-author Kinsler agrees that the fiber optics experiment is a technological stretch, but he counters that the problem can be eliminated by using a miles-long cable, as is routinely done in telecommunications.
"You can reduce the required power by using a longer fiber," he said. That's because the duration of the event you can hide depends on how long you can delay the light. A longer cable would allow you to get a longer delay from the same percentage slowdown, which would take less power.
Still, it may be a long while before police have anything to worry about—the materials needed for speeding and slowing light precisely enough for a bank heist have yet to be invented.
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CIA's fake vaccination drive procured Osama bin Laden's family DNA
The CIA organised a fake vaccination programme in the town where it believed Osama bin Laden was hiding in an elaborate attempt to obtain DNA from the fugitive al-Qaida leader's family, a Guardian investigation has found.
As part of extensive preparations for the raid that killed Bin Laden in May, CIA agents recruited a senior Pakistani doctor to organise the vaccine drive in Abbottabad, even starting the "project" in a poorer part of town to make it look more authentic, according to Pakistani and US officials and local residents.
The doctor, Shakil Afridi, has since been arrested by the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) for co-operating with American intelligence agents.
Relations between Washington and Islamabad, already severely strained by the Bin Laden operation, have deteriorated considerably since then. The doctor's arrest has exacerbated these tensions. The US is understood to be concerned for the doctor's safety, and is thought to have intervened on his behalf.
The vaccination plan was conceived after American intelligence officers tracked an al-Qaida courier, known as Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, to what turned out to be Bin Laden's Abbottabad compound last summer. The agency monitored the compound by satellite and surveillance from a local CIA safe house in Abbottabad, but wanted confirmation that Bin Laden was there before mounting a risky operation inside another country.
DNA from any of the Bin Laden children in the compound could be compared with a sample from his sister, who died in Boston in 2010, to provide evidence that the family was present.
So agents approached Afridi, the health official in charge of Khyber, part of the tribal area that runs along the Afghan border.
The doctor went to Abbottabad in March, saying he had procured funds to give free vaccinations for hepatitis B. Bypassing the management of the Abbottabad health services, he paid generous sums to low-ranking local government health workers, who took part in the operation without knowing about the connection to Bin Laden. Health visitors in the area were among the few people who had gained access to the Bin Laden compound in the past, administering polio drops to some of the children.
Afridi had posters for the vaccination programme put up around Abbottabad, featuring a vaccine made by Amson, a medicine manufacturer based on the outskirts of Islamabad.
In March health workers administered the vaccine in a poor neighbourhood on the edge of Abbottabad called Nawa Sher. The hepatitis B vaccine is usually given in three doses, the second a month after the first. But in April, instead of administering the second dose in Nawa Sher, the doctor returned to Abbottabad and moved the nurses on to Bilal Town, the suburb where Bin Laden lived.
It is not known exactly how the doctor hoped to get DNA from the vaccinations, although nurses could have been trained to withdraw some blood in the needle after administrating the drug.
"The whole thing was totally irregular," said one Pakistani official. "Bilal Town is a well-to-do area. Why would you choose that place to give free vaccines? And what is the official surgeon of Khyber doing working in Abbottabad?"
A nurse known as Bakhto, whose full name is Mukhtar Bibi, managed to gain entry to the Bin Laden compound to administer the vaccines. According to several sources, the doctor, who waited outside, told her to take in a handbag that was fitted with an electronic device. It is not clear what the device was, or whether she left it behind. It is also not known whether the CIA managed to obtain any Bin Laden DNA, although one source suggested the operation did not succeed.
Mukhtar Bibi, who was unaware of the real purpose of the vaccination campaign, would not comment on the programme.
Pakistani intelligence became aware of the doctor's activities during the investigation into the US raid in which Bin Laden was killed on the top floor of the Abbottabad house. Islamabad refused to comment officially on Afridi's arrest, but one senior official said: "Wouldn't any country detain people for working for a foreign spy service?"
The doctor is one of several people suspected of helping the CIA to have been arrested by the ISI, but he is thought to be the only one still in custody.
Pakistan is furious over being kept in the dark about the raid, and the US is angry that the Pakistani investigation appears more focused on finding out how the CIA was able to track down the al-Qaida leader than on how Bin Laden was able to live in Abbottabad for five years.
Over the weekend, relations were pummelled further when the US announced that it would cut $800m (£500m) worth of military aid as punishment for Pakistan's perceived lack of co-operation in the anti-terror fight. William Daley, the White House chief of staff, went on US television on Sunday to say: "Obviously, there's still a lot of pain that the political system in Pakistan is feeling by virtue of the raid that we did to get Osama bin Laden, something the president felt strongly about and we have no regrets over."
The CIA refused to comment on the vaccination plot. - guardian
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Lost 'Michelangelo' found at Campion Hall, Oxford
A lost painting by Renaissance artist Michelangelo has been hanging in a University of Oxford residence, an Italian scholar claims.
The Campion Hall painting, which depicts the crucifixion, had been thought to be by Marcello Venusti.
But Antonio Forcellino said infra-red technology had revealed the true creator of the masterpiece.
It has been removed from a wall of the Jesuit academic community and sent to the Ashmolean Museum for safekeeping.
'Excitement and concern'
The master of Campion Hall, Father Brendan Callaghan, said: "It's a very beautiful piece, but far too valuable to have on our wall any more."
He said he greeted the development that the work - called Crucifixion With The Madonna, St John And Two Mourning Angels - could be a Michelangelo with "a mixture of excitement and slight concern".
"Simply having it hanging on our wall wasn't a good idea," he explained.
"Its value in the three years I've been master has gone up tenfold, even if it's not by Michelangelo.
"No doubt the art historians will argue the points to and fro."
In his book The Lost Michelangelos, Mr Forcellino wrote: "No-one but Michelangelo could have painted such a masterpiece."
The painting was bought by Campion Hall at a Sotheby's auction in the 1930s. - BBC
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'RIDDLE OF THE HILLS' - CFZtv feature-length film
Click for video - RIDDLE OF THE HILLS
The latest feature-length film from CFZtv. At the end of 2010, a five man expedition from the Centre for Fortean Zoology went to the Garo Hills, in Meghalaya, Northern India to look for the Mande Burung - an Indian analogue of the Yeti. This is their story...
Directed and edited by Jonathan Downes for CFZtv
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Philadelphia Area Conference – October 15th 2011 Lineup
Joe Marra owns a practice in Altoona, Pennsylvania called the Urgent Care Center. He practices traditional medicine in conjunction with the more holistic approaches. Joe is a Hypnotherapist, Reiki Master, an intuitive healer and spiritual counselor. Joe will be speaking on “Putting the pieces of the puzzle together that we call life”…He will be speaking on how the UFO phenomenon relates to Bigfoot, and the ghostly realm, and energy healing. Joe will be speaking on “Putting the pieces of the puzzle together that we call life”…and how the UFO phenomenon relates to Bigfoot, and the ghostly realm, and energy healing.
John Ventre is the fourth and current Pennsylvania State Director, taking over in 2007. John will be speaking about 2012 and his book The Day After 2012. Delve into various End Time Prophecies from Hopi, Web Bot and Biblical, to Edgar Cayce and Jeanne Dixon. Why did the Mayans start with the date of 12/21/2012 and count backwards to create their perfectly accurate calendar? Follow the greatest discovery in our history after the “Event” in this fast paced theme park ride, and find out if we are a product of creation, evolution, or genetic engineering. It’s been predicted. We can all sense it in our collective memory and it’s coming. If you think these are the bad times; wait until 2013.
Linda Moulton Howe is an award winning journalist. She has devoted her documentary film, television, radio, writing and reporting career to productions concerning science, medicine and the environment. Ms. Howe has received local, national and international awards, including three regional Emmys, a national Emmy nomination and a Station Peabody award. While Linda was Director of Special Projects at KMGH-TV, Channel 7, Denver, Colorado from 1978 to 1983, her documentaries included Poison in the Wind and A Sun Kissed Poison which compared smog pollution in Los Angeles and Denver; Fire In The Water about hydrogen as an alternative energy source to fossil fuels; A Radioactive Water about uranium contamination of public drinking water in a Denver suburb; and A Strange Harvest and Strange Harvests 1993, which explored the animal mutilation mystery. She was producer and Live Studio Host for a Roswell UFO Crash special audience event for WATL-TV, Atlanta, 1990; Supervising Producer and Original Concept Creator, UFO Report: Sightings, Paramount Studios/FOX Network, Los Angeles, 1991; produced, wrote, directed, edited Strange Harvests 1993, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1994; segment productions TN, Discovery Channel, Learning Channel, History Channel, 1995-2007.
Bill Birnes is an American writer, editor, book publisher and literary rights agent. He is best known as an active publisher of UFO Magazine and host of the popular series UFO Hunters. He is the co-author of The Day After Roswell, which was a New York Times bestseller in 1997, and subsequently a documentary on The History Channel. Birnes is a frequent radio and television talk-show guest, having appeared on “Good Morning America,” “Dateline, NBC,” “Entertainment Tonight,” “Coast to Coast AM,” “UFOs in Russia,” “USOs, Underwater Submersible Objects,” and “Black Box UFOs.”
Bill Weber has always been interested in science and unknown phenomenon. The event which took place at Exeter, NH back in the ‘60’s really peaked his interest. This was the first telephone interview that Bill had conducted, as he had taken the liberty to speak with the police officers who had experienced that event. From here, Bill had proceeded to do his own research by reading and exploringeverything he could find on the subject. At this time, Bill wasn’t aware that MUFON even existed. Then back in December of 1995, Bill found them andjoined as a journal subscriber, soon reaching the level of Field Investigator Trainee. After several years, he elected to study for the position of Field Investigator, which he achieved in January of 2009. With over 50 cases under his belt, Bill continues to support MUFON by his participation in Pennsylvania State UFO conferences in the Philadelphia area and as a State Section Director.
Philadelphia Area Conference – October 16th 2011 Lineup
Robert Dean has been engaged in the field of UFO research for the last 40 years. He began this research on active duty in the US ARMY where he served for 27 years. He retired as Command Sergeant Major from the Army in 1976 as a highly decorated combat veteran after having served as an Infantry Unit Commander in combat in Korea and Vietnam. He also served in Intelligence Field Operations in Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam. Additionally, from 1963 to 1967 he served at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe ( SHAPE ), NATO as an intelligence analyst with a Cosmic Top Secret clearance. While on this assignment, he helped move the headquarters to the new site in Belgium. Dean worked in the Operations Division and was a member of the inner Command Staff thereby working with and seeing the SACEUR (Supreme Allied Commander Europe) almost every day. It was while he was stationed at SHAPE that Robert’s interest in UFOs first started. One night, while on duty, Robert removed a file from SHAPE’s security vault called “The Assessment” – An Evaluation of Possible Military Threat to Allied Forces in Europe”. This file was given the highest security classification, COSMIC TOP SECRET. It retains that security classification to this day. The contents of this file opened Robert’s eyes to the existence of UFOs and extraterrestrial intelligence. He has, since reading “The Assessment”, dedicated his life to one goal: Bringing to light the true facts surrounding the UFO phenomenon and contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. To this end, Robert’s current projects are directed toward gaining immunity for ex-military personnel who may shed some light on the UFO issue, enabling them to testify before a Congressional Hearing without fear of losing their pensions or of prosecution.
George Filer saw his first UFO in 1962. He was flying a tanker plane for the Air Force, refueling fighters over England. The control tower sent his plane to investigate a UFO on the radar, near Stonehenge. His plane dove from 33,000 feet to 1,000 feet to find it. His second encounter came a few years ago, from the bedroom of his Medford Lakes home, which faces Briarwood Lake. “I woke at 4 a.m.,” he said. “The bedroom was filled with light pouring in from out the window. I saw a UFO surfacing. It looked like a submarine coming out of the water, a blue ionization.” His wife slept through it. Filer spent 20 years in the Air Force, logging over 5,000 hours in the air. Most of his career he was an intelligence officer. He even briefed generals in Vietnam, where “a lot of times we’d get UFO reports over the DMZ [demilitarized zone].” Since he retired, Filer has become East Coast director of the Mutual UFO Network, the nation’s largest UFO organization. From his home office he edits a weekly Internet newsletter known as Filer’s Files.
Dr. Lynne Kitei is an internationally acclaimed physician and health educator who pushed aside her successful medical career to pursue The Phoenix Lights book and internationally award-winning Documentary project. She was leading the cutting edge era of early disease detection and prevention as Chief Clinical Consultant of the Imaging-Prevention-Wellness Center at the world renowned Arizona Heart Institute in Phoenix, Arizona until coming forward, after seven years of anonymity, as a key witness to the historic and still unexplained mass sighting throughout Arizona on March 13, 1997. Dr. Lynne’s innovative and renowned endeavors have been featured in publications including TV Guide Magazine, New Dawn Magazine, Runner Magazine, Physician’s Management Magazine, Phoenix Magazine, UFO Magazine, National News Network, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Spirit Guide, L.A. Times Magazine, East Valley Tribune, What is Enlightenment Magazine, National UFO Magazine, Paradise Magazine, Brazil’s Revista UFO Magazine, Open Minds Magazine, and numerous Arizona Republic Newspaper articles. She has also been recognized in the “Who’s Who of American Women” and was chosen as Woman of the Year in Pennsylvania.
Chris Augustin has been an Alien/UFO/Paranormal Investigator for 10+ years now. Over this time he has witnessed many strange things, including 2 UFO sightings, and numerous paranormal experiences. There’s too much that’s still unknown in our world, for us to simply dismiss it. UFOs exist, the proof is undeniable. Thousands of people make reports yearly of strange lights performing impossible maneuvers that traditional earth-bound aircraft, commercial, military, etc; could never accomplish. While most of the world’s governments try to deny the reality of their existence, they blame the sightings on natural aerial phenomenon, the planet Venus, swamp gas, weather balloons or mass hysteria. Whether you buy into the culturally biased, mass-media induced viewpoints, or if you choose to think on your own; there is one ultimate truth that the world is afraid to accept.the reality that we are not alone in the universe, the proof is here, the proof is real, accept the truth.
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