Box found in Tampa attic has coins, a map, a hand and a mystery
Mike Lopez's sister was recently cleaning out their grandparents attic in Tampa, Florida, when she came across a box with strange contents. Neatly organized with copper wire, the box contains coins, a map, a photograph and a hand. The hand is secured to the box with copper wire and has a ring on one finger. Lopez says he believes the photo is of his great grandparents Eve and Ernesto Lopez.
"It seems as though this belonged to my great grand parents because there is a picture of them in there," said Lopez. He also believes the box may have something to do with the mythical pirate Jose Gaspar. Lopez isn't sure when the photo or the box were made. The map has some clues. It's a map of downtown Tampa and shows the Hillsborough River and two bridges.
Rodney Kite-Powell, curator of the Tampa Bay History Center, was interested to examine the box and its contents. Kite-Powell noticed the photo is from the studio of the Burgert Brothers. He believes it is of the couple on their wedding day. The coins however, do not appear to be authentic spanish treasure.
"They're a little thin to be Spanish Coins or old coins in general. Generally older coins were thicker," said Kite-Powell. After a close examination of the map, Kite-Powell believes it's likely from the 1920's or 1930's. "It's fascinating, but I just don't know what to make of it aside from the fact that it's probably not Jose Gaspar's hand, these probably aren't Spanish coins," said Kite-Powell. Mike Lopez still believes the hand in the box is real. - WFLA
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Would animals swim differently on an alien planet?
If finned swimming animals evolved in an ocean on an alien world, what would they look like? Quite possibly a lot like the ones on Earth, a team of researchers says.
A new study that examined certain swimming species’ motion in the ocean found a surprising and elegant ratio embedded in the way they move. This ratio, described in the journal PLOS Biology, reveals a surprising case of convergent evolution over a diverse array of unrelated animals – and could help engineers build better swimming robots.
Previous work has found that there are striking similarities in the way that animals move through fluids (whether water or air). It’s part of a trend toward understanding the detailed physics of how animals move – perhaps with the intent to use these rules of movement to design more agile robots, said John Costello, a marine biologist at Providence College in Rhode Island who was not involved in the paper.
“I do think it’s part of a growing wave of understanding biological motion. … For many years people have been satisfied with generalities about thrust production,” said Costello, who has researched shared patterns of movement across swimming and flying species.
A team of researchers at Northwestern University first began to wonder about common rules of movement after studying the black ghost knifefish. The black ghost knifefish lives in freshwater streams in South America, and it moves around primarily using an undulating fin attached to its underside. This is unlike more well-known fish like trout or salmon, which sweep a tail (and the rear portion of their bodies) back and forth. Instead, the knifefish causes a wave to undulate down its thin fin, which runs most of the length of its body.
During their previous work on the ghost black knifefish, the scientists noticed that the fish’s maximum speed occurred when a total of two waves of motion could fit across the length of its fin, and they wondered whether there might be a common rule across different species.
The scientists studied 22 very different species of finned swimmers, using video recordings, lab studies and computer modeling to determine what pattern, if any, might exist. They even trimmed the fin on a fin-swimming robot – which looks something like a torpedo with a ribbon strung underneath – to see whether that made any difference.
They found that there was indeed a pattern in their motion – though it wasn’t quite what they expected. As it moved, each animal seemed to follow a specific pattern: the ratio between the length of each undulating wavelength and the amplitude (or height) of each wavelength was about 20 to 1. That is, every full back-and-forth wiggle of the fish’s fin was 20 times as long as the wiggle was wide. For each species they studied, including skates, rays, the black ghost knifefish, the cuttlefish and the Persian carpet flatworm -- that ratio remained 20 to 1.
“We found in every animal for which data are available, our prediction was correct,” said Neelesh Patankar, a mechanical engineer at Northwestern and one of the lead authors on the work.
“Physics puts constraints on the kinds of solutions nature can have and survive,” Patankar said.
And if complex alien life were ever to be found on another planet using a fin to swim, this same ratio would probably emerge, said Patankar’s co-lead author, Malcolm MacIver, a bioengineer at Northwestern.
“There’s only a certain number of ways in which animals can move effectively,” MacIver pointed out. If those alien animals were moving through liquid water on another planet, then the same fluid constraints apply. “Water’s water,” he said.
The findings could help scientists learn how to better build underwater robots that swim quickly and efficiently, the researchers added. Such skills are critical, for example, when sending underwater vehicles to deal with oil spills – and they can’t yet swim with the level of precision that these animals can.
“There’s a real need for underwater robots that can move with more agility,” MacIver said. - Would animals swim differently on an alien planet?
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Tracking UFO on Radar
USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT (CVN-71) - 10/20/2014:
-We were off the coast of the eastern seaboard, not 100% sure but I think we were off the Carolina's. The boat was doing work ups getting ready for deployment, we had a full deployment crew.
-Me and a couple of other ET's heard some of the watch standers on the island talking about seeing something crazy, they said something about trying lock on to it with the Nato Sea Sparrow Director's onto the object. Me and a handful of guys on the night shift ran up to the O-10 where the watch standers were watching it. They had the mounted Binoculars trained on the object. I thought they were mistaking two stars one of which looked like a pulsar (due to my pretty extensive knowledge of astronomy). The object then appeared between the two stars again, the other guys saw the object as well. We all thought we might be imagining it, asked each other a couple of times if they saw it too. We all agreed that it was there.
-When I first noticed it, i thought I was imagining it. How could a star disappear then reappear right in front of me? I watched it through the mounted binoculars changing colors between blue, white, purple, and pink at high speed, it kept pulsing.
-It seemed to stay motionless, the problem was that the altitude was just high for any of us to make out exactly what it looked like, from our vantage point we could see that it may have been hovering and possibly moving but just can't say for sure. After about 5 minutes of viewing the object as we were all trying to get a look at it, a bright flash filled the sky in the location of the object, it looked like it shot with an incredible speed and was gone. We were traveling North, the object was northeast of our Northerly heading. Our speed was approximately 15 to 20 knots.
-The three watch standers at there post reported that two similar objects had come out of the main relatively stationary object and then rejoined the main object.
-During my time watching the object CIC (Combat Information Center) was trying to get a radar lock on the object with the Nato Sea Sparrow Missile Directors. The directors (which are radar directors, fire control radar) kept trying to lock onto the object then it would drop back down to the horizon, the OS's (Operation Specialists) trying to drive the director back there again. Every time they would drive to get a lock the lock would fail and the director would be driven back down again. It seemed to me that the object was overriding the directors drive control or that the radar receiver was being over powered and being forced by internal programming to protect its receiver, (to get away from the source of the electromagnetic radiation) it could have been over-driven by the object being to close but more than likely the object was jamming the radar. I can't say weather it was jamming the object passively or actively, just that the radar was being jammed.
-After the sighting I checked the SPN-43 and SPS-49 radar in CATCC neither of them had a radar return, although at that altitude the chances of a radar return are very slim.
-I tried to report it to my chain of command, they laughed at me and said that we didn't see anything. We probably just excited, I didn't expect that reaction especially when CIC reacted the way they did. - MUFON CMS
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