Small meteorite leaves 40ft wide crater in Nicaragua
A small meteorite landed near the international airport in the Nicaraguan capital, Managua, on Saturday night, government officials say.
Residents reported hearing a loud bang and feeling the impact, which left a crater 12m (40ft) wide and 5m deep.
Government spokeswoman Rosario Murillo said the meteorite seemed to have broken off an asteroid which was passing close to Earth.
She said international experts had been called in to investigate further.
No-one was hurt when it hit the wooded area near the international airport and an air force base.
An adviser to Nicaragua's Institute of Earth Studies (Ineter), Wilfried Strauch, said he was "convinced it was a meteorite" which caused the impact.
Picture shows an impact crater made by a small meteorite in a wooded area near Managua's international airport.
Experts studying the crater said it was not clear whether the meteorite had disintegrated upon impact or had been blasted into soil.
Locals said they heard a large blast just before midnight local time and reported a burning smell.
"We thought it was a bomb because we felt an expansive wave," Jorge Santamaria told Associated Press news agency.
Ineter scientist Jose Millan said that "we need to celebrate the fact that it fell in an area where, thank God, it didn't cause any danger to the population".
Managua, which has more than a million inhabitants is densely populated.
"All the evidence that we've confirmed at the site corresponds exactly with a meteorite and not with any other type of event," he said.
"We have the seismic register which coincides with the time of impact, and the typical characteristic that it produces a cone in the place of impact," he added.
Astronomer Humberto Saballos said the meteorite could have broken off from the 2014RC asteroid which passed Earth at the same time.
2014RC, which is the size of a house, came closest to earth at 18:18 GMT on Sunday, when it passed over New Zealand at a distance of about 40,000km (25,000 miles).
The asteroid was first discovered on 31 August and, at its closest approach, was about one-tenth of the distance from the centre of Earth to the Moon, Nasa said in a statement.
It is expected to orbit near Earth again in the future.
In February 2013, a meteorite exploded over Chelyabinsk in Central Russia, injuring more than 1,000 people.
Nasa currently tracks more than 11,000 asteroids in orbits that pass relatively close to Earth. - AP
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'Jack the Ripper' Identity Discovered?
It is one of the world's greatest murder mysteries which has baffled investigators for more than a century.
But now an author and self confessed "armchair detective" claims to have solved perhaps the most notorious whodunit ever, and discovered who Jack the Ripper was.
Russell Edwards claims Aaron Kosminski, a 23 year-old Polish immigrant who ended up dying in an asylum, was "definitely, categorically and absolutely" the man behind the grisly killing spree in 1888 in London's East End.
Mr Edwards said a blood-stained shawl he bought in 2007 after an auction in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, held vital DNA evidence which led him to the killer.
Naming Jack the Ripper
He said: "I've got the only piece of forensic evidence in the whole history of the case. I've spent 14 years working on it, and we have definitively solved the mystery of who Jack the Ripper was.
"Only non-believers that want to perpetuate the myth will doubt. This is it now - we have unmasked him."
Jack the Ripper murdered at least five women, slashing their throats, removing some of their internal organs and leaving their mutilated bodied in Whitechapel's darkened alleyways.
Mr Edwards, 48, from Barnet, north London, was "captivated" by the murder mystery and had been investigating it in his spare time, but had come to the conclusion it could never be solved.
But then in 2007 he saw a shawl found by the body of Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper's victims, was up for sale.
He bought it, and enlisted the help of Jari Louhelainen, an expert in molecular biology, who used pioneering techniques to find DNA from her blood and that of the killer.
He said: "Here I am with the shawl and possibly the evidence to solve the most unsolvable murder in English criminal history. But where do I start? That was the big question.
"I enlisted the help of Jari and we embarked on a three-and-a-half year journey.
"When we discovered the truth it was the most amazing feeling of my entire life."
Mr Edwards said the discovery 126 years after the murders proves beyond doubt that Kosminski - one of the six key suspects commonly cited as the Ripper - was the actual killer.
He said the shawl had been taken by acting Sergeant Amos Simpson, who was on duty the night of Eddowes's death and wanted it for his wife.
But horrified at the blood-soaked wrap, she never wore it, and it was stored away and passed down through the generations until it came to auction seven years ago.
Mr Edwards said: "Thank God the shawl has never been washed, as it held the vital evidence."
The author, who said he was part-inspired to take up the search for the killer after watching the Johnny Depp film From Hell about the Ripper murders, said police had identified Kosminski as a suspect, but never had enough evidence to bring him to trial.
Kosminski was a Polish Jewish immigrant who, fleeing persecution in his Russia-controlled homeland, came with his family to England in 1881 and lived in Mile End Old Town.
He was admitted to a string of lunatic asylums, where he died in 1899 of gangrene in the leg.
Naming Jack the Ripper
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Prahlad Jani claims he's had no need for food or water, for 65 Years
"I feel no need for food and water," states Prahlad Jani, a seventy-six year old Indian ascetic who lives in a cave near the Ambaji temple in the state of Gujarat. Mr. Jani claims that he has not had food or fluids to drink for the last sixty-five years. At the age of seven years he left home in search of spiritual unfoldment. Jani states that at the age of eleven years he was blessed by a goddess. He claims that since that blessing he has gained his sustenance from nectar that filters down through a hole in his palate, and has not passed urine or stools since then. Mr. Jani explained, "I get the elixir of life from the hole in my palate, which enables me to go without food and water." Almost daily Mr. Jani enters a state of Samadhi characterized by extreme bliss and enormous light and strength. He says that he has never experienced medical problems. He says that he did not speak for a period of forty-five years.
In November 2003, after over a year of coaxing, Prahlad Jani was finally persuaded to participate in a scientific research study. A medical research team of twenty-one specialists, headed by Dr. Sudhir V. Shah, had Mr. Jani under twenty-four hours of observation for ten days at the Sterling Hospital in Ahmedabad. The team's research expertise included cardiology, neurology, urology, gastroenterology, ophthalmology, renal function, pulmonary function, ENT analysis, psychiatry, general medicine, and other specialities. A series of investigations were done on Mr. Jani in each of these areas according to a pre-determined protocol, and additional tests were carried out as per suggestions of the team. At the conclusion of their intensive investigations the team's doctors were left with an unexplained mystery, unable to disprove Mr. Jani's claims. Read more at psychedelicadventure
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Please Support Phantoms & Monsters
Well....it's September again. Each March and September I ask the readers to show their appreciation for the work involved in bringing them Phantoms & Monsters. A few readers have setup monthly donations through Paypal, which is truly welcomed. If you feel you can contribute, please use the button below or go directly to www.paypal.com and use my email lonstrickler@phantomsandmonsters as the payee. Thanks for you support and consideration! Lon
Your continued support of 'Phantoms & Monsters' is important and appreciated. Thanks for reading!
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Life began on Earth much earlier than thought
Scientists have determined that oxygen-producing life forms appeared around 3 billion years ago.
Based on the work of researchers at Trinity College Dublin and Presidency University in Kolkata, the discovery suggests that oxygen-producing organisms responsible for making it possible for more complex life forms to evolve first appeared on Earth 60 million years earlier than previously believed.
The discovery was made by measuring uranium-lead isotope decay in the rocks to find evidence of oxygen-based soil formation.
"This is a very exciting finding, which helps to fill a gap in our knowledge about the evolution of the early Earth," said study lead author Quentin Crowley.
"This paleosol from India is telling us that there was a short-lived pulse of atmospheric oxygenation and this occurred considerably earlier than previously envisaged."
While micro-organisms certainly existed earlier than 3 billion years ago, it wasn't until this time that some of them evolved the ability to produce oxygen through photosynthesis. Read more at IBN Live
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