What is the Mysterious Black Line?
Mike Weight was strolling the beach at Honeymoon Island about noon Wednesday when he saw something weird.
A black line appeared against the bright blue sky, shooting down from a cloud into the gulf.
"At first I thought it was an optical illusion because it was like a dark piece of sky with a light sky background," Weight said. "You could see through it."
Maybe it's a waterspout, he thought. That theory faded quickly. This was no funnel cloud.
Confused, the 73-year-old Clearwater resident pulled out his phone and took a couple of pictures.
He emailed them to the Times, attached with a note.
"Any idea what this was?"
Mike Clay, chief meteorologist at Bay News 9, didn't know what the black line was either. He shared the photos with several other weather experts.
One meteorologist came back with a theory: It could be the shadow of a contrail, the stream of condensed water vapor left by a rocket or plane. The contrail could have been concealed by clouds, Clay said.
For such a shadow to appear, conditions need to be just right, with the sun and contrail in precise spots.
But that's just a theory. Clay said no one he spoke with is entirely sure what Weight saw.
"I think we're all just guessing," he said.
What do you think? Have you seen a similar black line in the sky? Do you have any pictures? - TampaBay
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Windsor's mysterious hum is real, says researcher
A University of Windsor professor studying the Windsor Hum is convinced it's real.
Colin Novak set up a state-of-the-art, $250,000 recording station in a woodlot in the western part of the Ontario city in February. It's a virtual ear, tuned to record the hum 24/7.
Novak and a group of fellow scientists and researchers from the University of Windsor and London's University of Western Ontario received federal funding to study the mysterious noise.
When the sound he's looking for rises above a certain level it's registered on the equipment and Novak gets an email.
He said for the last month or so, his inbox has been full.
"Some of the evenings, we may get 30 or 40 emails in a given night, mostly between midnight and about 3:30 a.m.," Novak said.
That's enough to convince him the hum is real.
"We're in a pretty remote area in the night time. There's some construction activity happening right now, but at night, there's not too much out here.… when we're getting levels as high as we are, there's definitely some activity," he said.
The equipment's location hasn't been made public, but it's located in an area where the hum has been heard by Windsor residents.
Novak said he has an idea where the sound is coming from, but he won't speculate until his research is finished.
He and his partners will report their findings to the federal government by the end of the year.
"And from that point forward, I think it may become more of a political, and an engineering problem," Novak said.
People who live in the area have some theories of their own as to where the sound is originating.
Archie Cormier is a Windsor resident who claims to hear the noise.
"It's on the American side, and it doesn't do it all the time," he said of the noise. "So, if they can pinpoint the problem, then maybe they could find a solution."
Last year, a federal study suggested the hum may originate from the U.S. side of the Detroit River, in the general area of Zug Island, an area of concentrated steel production and manufacturing in River Rouge, Mich.
The mayor of River Rouge said in 2011 that his city didn't have the funds to investigate the hum. - CBC
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Witch on the Run
Saudi police are searching for an Indonesian housemaid accused by her employer of casting a magic spell on all his family, causing fainting and epileptic fits to them.
The Saudi man said the maid joined his family in the capital Riyadh nearly three years ago and that she has been treated nicely by all family members.
“Recently, all family members has started to suffer from fainting and epileptic fits. After the housemaid fled, we found magic items planted in various part of our house,” the unnamed man said, quoted by Sabq Arabic language daily.
“I swear that we do not want to hurt her but to stop her evil acts against us and others,” said the man, who published a picture of the 31-year-old maid in newspapers. - Emirates247
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Something crash-landed in Norfolk, VA
Simply nobody will be giving any credence to officials in America who have stated that a mystery object which fell from the sky this week - after which the surrounding area was evacuated and sealed off for some time by police and military personnel - was just a "weather balloon".
Reportedly, large numbers of government operatives from various agencies converged urgently on a residential neighbourhood in Norfolk, Virginia, on Tuesday night after an unidentified object fell from the sky there. News reports describe the object as "something odd", with some eyewitness accounts saying it resembled a balloon and others suggesting that the crash-landed artifact had a structure similar to "styrofoam". According to local TV news:
One person told authorities it was making a strange noise.
People living and working in the immediate area were rapidly evacuated and the district was sealed off by a combination of police and military personnel. The presence of operatives from shadowy federal agencies in overall charge of the incident was - of course - not mentioned by spokesmen briefing the media.
However, it was revealed that initial contact with the landed object was handled using a robot. Following this there was consultation with experts from NASA.
Not long thereafter the mystery object from the sky was apparently loaded onto an unidentified government vehicle and removed from the scene. Subsequently local residents were permitted to return to their homes and the military and police contingents dispersed.
An official spokesman, Battalion Chief Julian Williamson, then briefed reporters, saying that "investigators made contact with the package and determined it to be ... a weather balloon".
He also urged anyone finding or seeing any other such objects or happenings:
"Do not investigate on your own. Just call the authorities." - The Register
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