Baltic Sea anomaly 'not an alien craft'
Swedish explorers have put to rest speculation of a spaceship at the bottom of the Baltic -- but they're adding fuel to the ‘what is it’ mystery of this deep-sea object anyway.
Digital pictures FoxNews.com has obtained from the team show that the object, located beneath the waves of the Baltic between Sweden and Finland, is some sort of “natural, geological formation,” Peter Lindberg, the leader of the Ocean Explorer team, told FoxNews.com.
“It’s not obviously an alien spacecraft. It’s not made of metal,” the scientist said. Lindberg concedes that it could be an alien space ship -- if the aliens decided to make their vessels out of meteor-like rocks. “Who says they had to use metal?” he joked. “This trip has raised a lot of questions.”
For 12 days, starting on June 1, 2012, Lindberg, his partner Dennis Asberg, and other scientists and divers explored the 200-foot wide object under the Baltic that they had first discovered a year ago on sonar. Employing a robot camera, sonar and deep sea divers, this time, Lindberg and Asberg spent nearly two weeks probing the object and its environs.
Scientists are still examining the footage from the expedition, but it appears like a giant stone, “the kind divers see in keys and harbors” -- one that seems to originate from before the Ice Age, Lindberg said. The main object was not the only thing seen by the explorers. “There are other, loose stones lying around as well,” he added. “The formation of rocks is 60 meters in diameter.”
While this unidentified flying object may have been identified, and likely never flew, it still holds secrets.
The odd thing about the discovery is that there is no silt on the rock, for example; it would ordinarily be covered with silt on the bottom of the sea, Lindberg said.
Even more odd for a seemingly natural formation, the main object is disc-shaped and “appears to have construction lines and boxes drawn on it,” Lindberg said. “There are also straight edges.”
The divers were limited in what they could see by their lighting technology. This gave them an illumination of only one meter at the most. Sonar was used to explore the object as well.
“The surface has cracks on it,” said Lindberg. “There is some black material in the cracks, but we don’t know what it is.”
Adding to the mystery, there appears to be a pillar which is holding up the 200 foot wide object, said Lindberg. “The pillar is eight meters high,” he added.
Divers explored the space, slowly, so as not to stir up undersea silt and interfere with digital photography. They collected stone samples from nearby the object as well as sonar images and digital images. “We’re going through the footage right now,” said Lindberg, who promised more footage for FoxNews after the team finished screening it.
“If an intelligent life form has built a spaceship, there’s the question of ‘why not make it out of stone or coral,’ he said.”
The discovery of what may or may not be the wreckage of an alien spacecraft that crash landed years ago off their sea coast has not created great anxiety in the populace of Sweden, a traditionally urbane and world weary culture. The oceanic equivalent of Roswell, N.M. is pretty much routine fare there, it seems.
“They’re taking it very cooly,” Lindberg told FoxNews.com. “If we had found actual aliens, they probably would say, ‘Oh, there are aliens down there.’"
"The Americans and the Japanese are much more excited.” - discovery
The Baltic: A New History of the Region and its People
The Baltic and the North Seas (Seas in History)
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Mysterious Electric Blue Clouds Appear Again Over the Poles
Every year around this time, mysterious electric blue clouds appear over the North and South pole. They are called noctilucent clouds and they can only be seen in deep twilight, when the Sun is below the horizon. According to NASA, "their origin is still largely a mystery":
Various theories associate them with meteoric dust, rocket exhaust, global warming—or some mixture of the three.
They are the highest clouds, located almost on the edge of space at 54 miles (85 kilometers) from the Earth's surface, in the mesosphere. They are very difficult to observe, but they appear as white and blue tendrils when they are illuminated by the Sun and the rest of the atmosphere is in our planet's shadow.
These were photographed by Brian Whittaker at 35,000 feet, on a flight from Ottawa to Newfoundland.
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The 'Roar' in Eastern Pennsylvania
Heidi Lucas says she is not sure when she started hearing the sounds. At first she would notice it at night, then quickly disregard it.
Last June, Lucas says the noise struck her as becoming more invasive. So she started keeping records of when it was audible. “It started to become persistent and consistent,” said Lucas, who lives in the 600 block of Park Road in the West Point Village, Her house is about three roads away from Merck & Co. Inc.’s West Point plant. On April 17, Lucas and her husband, Tim, appeared at the Upper Gwynedd Township Board of Commissioners workshop meeting to discuss the situation. Exiting the township building at 1 Parkside Place, Lucas said she noticed the same sound, which she described as a loud roar with a mechanical vibration. “The sound permeates the village,” she said. Lucas said the noise, which reminds her of a jet engine or a large power washing system, has led her to drive through the township several times during the night searching for the source.
Following eight months of contact with state Rep. Kate Harper, R-63rd District, as well as individual meetings with township and Merck officials, Lucas called her appearance at the commissioners meeting a last resort. She struck a conciliatory tone with the elected officials, asking them to help find the source of the noise. “We’ve lived here for more than 30 years,” she said during the meeting. “We’ve had no need to complain about anything.”
According to Lucas, neighbors have expressed similar complaints during casual conversation. She said another told her in an e-mail that sound has been an annoyance for two years. “Two other people said ‘why bother saying anything at all,’” Lucas said last week. A municipal ordinance permits sounds not to exceed 65 decibels during the day and 60 decibels at night, according to township Manager Len Perrone. Multiple sound studies conducted by Merck at the intersection of West Point Pike at Jones Avenue — the location identified by the couple as the source of the sound — have delivered readings below the township’s decibel requirements, according to company spokesperson Colleen Lange.
In May, the Board of Commissioners voted to approve a sound study of five locations in the township. The municipality’s sound engineer is currently collecting samples, according to Commissioner Jim Santi. He said the firm GAI Consultants will be paid $4,000 to complete the work. According to Santi, three of the locations will be on Merck property, one at the industrial park on Jones Avenue and one near residental properties on Park Avenue. No one has confirmed Merck’s manufacturing plant as the source of the sound, according to Lucas. “I would like for someone to try to help us work this out,” she said. Meanwhile, Lange says the pharmaceutical company will continue to work with the township to solve the problem. “That’s our goal,” she said. “Merck will continue to act as a good neighbor.” - thereporteronline
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New Yowie Evidence
Snarling, 3m "hairy men" could be sneaking around in bushland near you right now.
Yowie researchers are on their way to the Northern Rivers, citing new evidence that these mysterious creatures are living around Lismore and Casino.
Known as the "Bigfoot of the Bush" or the giant "hairy man", yowie believers say the beings are a primitive, ape-like race dating back at least two million years.
The father of yowie research, Rex "The Yowie Man" Gilroy, will be leading the investigation in Lismore.
Mr Gilroy and his wife, Heather, are directors of the Australian Yowie Research Centre, which they set up in 1976 in an effort to gather evidence of yowies for scientific assessment.
Now they are bringing their work to the Northern Rivers after reports of recent sightings.
Coming with them are a number of cryptozoologists (people who search for animals whose existence has not yet been proven), and they are looking for local input.
"We will be following up a number of new leads," Mr Gilroy said.
"Perhaps there are readers who have information helpful to our investigation, and we will welcome their assistance.
"Yowie footprints from the Lismore area were among a number used in a recent Animal Planet TV documentary on North America's Bigfoot and the yowie, with which we are involved.
"We plan to search hereabouts, where it was claimed a male and female pair of hairy hominids were seen recently by hikers, moving through a forest apparently searching for herbivorous food.
"The fresh tracks found in the Lismore area match others from the Kempsey and Blue Mountains wilds, all of which display an opposable big toe."
The Gilroys have more than 200 plaster casts of yowie tracks and thousands of accounts of yowie sightings. - northernstar
The Yowie: In Search of Australia's Bigfoot
