When a huge tornado funnel cloud touched down in Orchard, Iowa, Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 9:04 p.m, Lori Mehmen took a life-a-time opportunity to capture this amazing photo from outside her front door. The funnel cloud which caused tree and crop damage came near the ground and then went back up into the clouds. Source: Chinadaily
Picture source: Xinhuanet
The State of Israel finally has its national bird. The Hoopoe [wiki] (Duchifat--דוכיפת --in Hebrew), listed in the Old Testament as unclean and forbidden food for Jews, was selected as Israel's first national bird. Shimon Perez, the country's President, announced on Thursday. The pink, black and white-crested bird, among other candidates such as bulbul and red falcon etc. won a nationwide election held by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel since November. A total of 155,000 Israeli people participated in the voting, with 35% of them choosing Hoopoe as their national bird. Source: Ynet & Reuters
The massive Daisetta sinkhole believed to be as long as two football fields and up to 100 feet deep has swallowed vehicles and oil field equipment. It is still developing. Daisetta, a town of 1000 population, is a once booming oil town. The ground might have caved in because of the collapse of an old salt dome where oil brine and natural gas are stored underground. Link
In a new book titled The Thinkers Of The Jungle which will be published by Ullmann Publishing in UK on May 5, there is a world exclusive, extraordinary image--a male orangutan in Borneo on the island of Kaja photographed hunting fish with the spear! It is the first time the animal has been seen using a tool to hunt, demonstrating our long-armed cousins do indeed have a remarkable ability to mimic human being's behaviour. This unique orangutan who could catch fish already trapped in the fishing lines learned his hunting skills from the locals they usually fished with spears on the Gohong River, Indonesia. Source: Dailymail
Wells Nevada Earthquake--A strong earthquake with the Richer scale of 6.3 this morning has hit Nevada's Wells, where was founded in 1869 by Central Pacific Railroad, now known as Union Pacific Railroad. The epicenter of the earthquake in Elko County is 430 miles north of Las Vegas or about 250 km from Salt Lake City, Utah. The strong tremors left the sin city Las Vegas intact but did caused widespread damages in Wells. Luckily, there were no causalities caused. From Reuters
A magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck northeastern Nevada on Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.
There were no immediate reports of damage in the nearest large city, Salt Lake City, Utah, although some residents were shaken by the morning quake, local radio said.
The quake, centered 11 miles (18 km) southeast of Wells, Nevada, struck at 6:16 a.m. PST (1416 GMT), with a shallow epicenter of 6.27 miles (10km) deep.
Wells, a town of about 1,300 people, is 382 miles (614 km) north of the gambling center of Las Vegas and 150 miles (244 km) west of Salt Lake City.
From AP
The magnitude of the quake, initially estimated at 6.3, was later revised to 6.0 by the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo. The quake was centered in a sparsely populated area 11 miles southeast of Wells near the Nevada-Utah line.
"It was pretty bad," said Jane Kelso, who answered the phone at the Motel 6. "Everything in our whole building shook. "We have cracks in our walls."
The temblor was felt across eastern Nevada, Utah and as far away as Southern California. In Twin Falls, Idaho, residents reported severe shaking and items falling off shelves.
"Definitely a lot of people felt this, and if they were sleeping, they were awoken," said USGS geophysicist Carrieann Bedwell.
Elko County Undersheriff Rocky Gonzalez said there were reports of some damage to buildings. At least one building collapsed, he said, and a Flying J truck stop was evacuated because of a propane leak, he said.
There were no immediate reports of serious injuries, but a manager at the truck stop said the store was a wreck, with groceries and goods scattered. One woman was reportedly injured when cigarette rack fell on her.
Palm Tree Tahina spectabilis (picture credit: AP via BBC)
A new species of giant self-destructing palm was found in Madagascar by botanists from Kew Gardens of London. Scientists believe it is possible that the palm has quietly gone through a remarkable evolution since Madagascar split with India some 80m years ago.
The tree, which only exists in the remote north-west of the island country in Indian Ocean, is 20m (60ft) high with leaves 5m (16ft) long, the tallest tree of its type in the country, and has a lifespan of around 100 years.
In the living memory, the tree was never seen blossoming not until 2007. But botanist only found that the tree expends so much energy on flowering that it eventually collapses and dies.
The palm has been named Tahina spectabilis, which is Malagasy for "blessed" or "to be protected". It is also one of the given names of Anne-Tahina Metz, the daughter of Xavier Metz, a Frenchman who manages a cashew plantation in remote northwestern Madagascar and discovers the palm in 2006. Source: BBC
Dozens of residents in Stephenville, Texas said they sighted what they believed is a UFO. But there were no photographs of them.
"They were really, really bright," said Erath County Constable Lee Roy Gaitan.
Dozens of others, including a pilot, a teacher and business owners in that area, reported seeing the same thing.
"People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it's the end of times," said Steve Allen, a freight company owner and pilot who said the object he saw last week was a mile long and half a mile wide. "It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts."
Stephenville officials said there is a logical explanation about the so-called UFO sightings:
The object may have been an illusion caused by two commercial airplanes, said Maj. Karl Lewis, a spokesman for the 301st Fighter Wing at the Joint Reserve Base Naval Air Station in Fort Worth.
Lewis said the object may have been an illusion caused by two commercial airplanes. Lights from the aircraft would seem unusually bright and may appear orange from the setting sun.
"I'm 90 percent sure this was an airliner," Lewis said. "With the sun's angle, it can play tricks on you."
But people in the small town insisted they saw a large object with bright lights flying low and fast as on the day there were no Air Force's planes in the area. From NBC5i
"I saw two red glows," Gaitan said. "They glowed, and then they kind of faded and glowed again. And I looked again. I thought, 'That's just not right.'"
When his 8-year-old son Ryan came outside, the red glow had turned bright white.
"It looked faster than a jet," Ryan Gaitan said.
Lee Roy Gaitan said he saw the lights move around in the sky.
"They were really, really bright," he said.
Gaitan and his son said the lights jetted across the sky.
"What was so astonishing was the speed that this thing took off," Gaitan said. "I mean, it took off so fast."
"It wasn't an airplane," Gaitan said. "It wasn't a meteor, because it wouldn't have been bouncing around. It wasn't just one light."
He said the lights were like nothing on Earth.
From MSNBC
Machinist Ricky Sorrells said friends made fun of him when he told them he saw a flat, metallic object hovering about 300 feet over a pasture behind his Dublin home. But he decided to come forward after reading similar accounts in the Stephenville Empire-Tribune.
"You hear about big bass or big buck in the area, but this is a different deal," Sorrells said. "It feels good to hear that other people saw something, because that means I'm not crazy."
Sorrells said he has seen the object several times. He said he watched it through his rifle's telescopic lens and described it as very large and without seams, nuts or bolts.
If interested, click here watch the video of UFO spotted over Haiti Sky! :-)
The amazing picture above cropped from the award-winning Finnish photographer Antti Kemppainen's original photo shows a faraway comet clearly seen between the nearby festival fireworks and lightning. From APOD
On January 26, 2007 people from Perth, Australia gathered on a local beach to watch a sky light up with delights near and far. Nearby, fireworks exploded as part of Australia Day celebrations. On the far right, lightning from a thunderstorm flashed in the distance. Near the image center, though, seen through clouds, was the most unusual sight of all: Comet McNaught. The photogenic comet was so bright that it even remained visible though the din of Earthly flashes. The above image is actually a three photograph panorama digitally processed to reduce red reflections from the exploding firework.
Maunder Crater on Mars (photo credit:NASA)
Mars Asteroid! An asteroid named 2007 WD5 is to have a 1-in-75 chance of hitting Mars, the fourth planet from the sun in our solar system, on January 30, 2008.
If the asteroid with a length of an Olympic-size swimming pool (about 160 feet across) does hit the red planet, the impact of 2007 WD5, which travels at a speed of 28,000 mph, with Mars, will blast a crater half-a-mile wide, said Steve Chesley, a member of NASA's Near Earth Object office at JPL in Pasadena.
"Because scientists have never observed an asteroid impact -- the closest thing being the 1994 collision of comet Shoemaker-Levy with Jupiter -- such a collision on Mars would produce a 'scientific bonanza." Chesley told to the LAT.
The asteroid which was traced only since November is about the size of one that exploded over Siberia in the Tunguska event of 1908 [wiki]. The force of that explosion, the equivalent of 10 million to 20 million tons of TNT, turned hundreds of square miles of forest into a flattened expanse of scorched logs. The left image is a computer-generated picture showing a 3D reconstruction of Lake Cheko [wiki] which scientists from University of Bologna in Italy claimed to be the crater left by Tunguska event.
Update: The possibility of Mars asteroid collision on January 30 is now very low, a January 9 update on the Near-Earth Object Program at the NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said the impact probability is approximately 0.01% or 1 in 10,000 odds.
Since our last update, we have received numerous tracking measurements of asteroid 2007 WD5 from four different observatories. These new data have led to a significant reduction in the position uncertainties during the asteroid's close approach to Mars on Jan. 30, 2008. As a result, the impact probability has dropped dramatically, to approximately 0.01% or 1 in 10,000 odds, effectively ruling out the possible collision with Mars.
Our best estimate now is that 2007 WD5 will pass about 26,000 km from the planet's center (about 7 Mars radii from the surface) at around 12:00 UTC (4:00 am PST) on Jan. 30th. With 99.7% confidence, the pass should be no closer than 4000 km from the surface.
Impact craters are routinely scattered on the surface of moon, but not on the Earth. Meteor Crater in Arizona is one of the best known examples of an impact crater on Earth. The crater is 1.2 kilometers in diameter and 200 meters deep. It formed approximately 49,000 years ago when an iron meteorite that was roughly the size of a school bus struck the Arizona desert east of what is now Flagstaff (via).
Picture of Meteor Crater in Arizona (by David Roddy, USGS)
Another famous meteror crater on the Earth is Mexico's Chicxulub Meteror Crater on Yutachan peninsular, which was formed when a large asteroid/comet struck the Earth 65 million years ago and believed to be responsible for the die-out of Dinosaurs during the Cretaceous mass extinction. The following two pictures show the Chicxulub crater (via) and its location (via).
Naja ashei, World's Largest Spitting Cobra
Conservationists from WildlifeDirect found a new spitting cobra species, Naja ashei, which is named after late James Ashe, a cobra expert who founded Bio-Ken snake farm in Watamu on Kenya's tropical coast. Growing up to nine feet (2.74m) and possessing enough venom to kill 20 people with one bite, Naja ashei, also known as a large brown spitting cobra, is the world's largest spitting cobra (king cobra is the world's largest venomous snake.
According to Herpetologist Wolfgang Wuster and Donald G. Bradley, this unique snake can be found in the dry lowlands of northern and eastern Kenya, northeastern Uganda, southern Ethiopia and southern Somalia. So whenever you or your friends travel to this area, please do pay attention to the risk of encountering such deadly cobra.
More pictures after jump:
Fossilized hadrosaur Dakota skin picture (Tyler Larson/National Geographic)
The partially mummified hadrosaur [wiki], dubbed Dakota, were found in 2000 by Tyler Lyson, then a 17-year-old boy, on his uncle's ranch in North Dakota.
The creature is fossilized, with the skin and bone turned to stone. But unlike most dinosaur fossils, tissues are preserved as well.
Scientists believed the Dakota hadrosaur should be the most complete dinosaur ever found, with intact skin where clear remains of scales were visible.
"This is not a skin impression. This is fossilized skin," paleontologist Phil Manning of the University of Manchester said. "When you run your hands over this dinosaur's skin, this is the closest you are going to get to touching a real dinosaur, ever." Source: Reuters
Click here for a serial photos of a giant white shark jumping out of water to swallow a seal. Awesome!
Zhou Zhenglong, 52, a farmer and former hunter in Chengguan Township of Shaanxi's Zhenping County, was reported to have taken 71 (40 digital and 31 film) pictures on a rare wild South China Tiger on 2/3 Oct. 2007 (a date even himself got confused. link ). Those pictures have been confirmed genuine and the film has kept in the State Forestry Administration, but the genuinity of that "rare wild South China tiger" was suspected by many, including a scientist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
From Times Online
Fu Dezhi, a botanist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, voiced doubts about the vegetation in the photograph, saying that it would be unusual to find a leaf of a size similar to the one that obscured much of the tiger’s head. “I have never discussed whether this is a real tiger because that issue is not my specialty,” he wrote in a blog. “But based on my botanical expertise . . . this is just a ‘paper tiger’.”
Mr Zhou and provincial authorities travelled to Beijing last week for meetings at the state forestry administration.
Officials declined to comment on whether they had reached a decision on the authenticity of the photograph.
Mr Zhou told The Times: “I spent more than a month in the mountains to take these pictures. They are 100 per cent real. No matter who says they are fake, they cannot change the facts.” He said that he planned to set out again into the mountains. “I can’t promise to take more pictures, but there’s hope. The wild tigers are in the mountains.”
From Xinhua
[...] But dozens of netizens expressed doubts about the authenticity of the digital picture -- the only one of the 71 taken to be released at the news conference -- after it had been posted on the Internet, especially in on-line forums discussing Photoshop (PS) technologies.
Netizens suspected that the picture had been processed with PS technologies before release, citing the irregular effects of illumination and focus, and the unreal fur color of the tiger.
Some doubted whether the tiger is a wild one because its eyes look mild and dull, not frightening.
While others said that the tiger's skin and hair seem too shiny, without three-dimensional effect, and speculated that the digital picture might be taken from another picture featuring a South China tiger, or even that a tiger picture was enlarged, made into cardboard cut-out and placed in bushes before being photographed.
But Mr. Zhou has viciously denied the tiger is a paper tiger and the local officials also heavily defended him:
The owner of the disputed photo, Zhou, from Wencai Village in Chengguan Township, was angered by the suspicious remarks.
"It's beyond doubt that I really took the photos of a South China tiger. If they (netizens) have doubts about the photo provided by the forestry department, they can go and ask the officials," he said.
"Zhou Zhenglong risked his life in taking these photos, so they are very precious. We are being cautious and responsible in releasing one of the photos," said Zhu Julong, deputy head of the Provincial Forestry Department.
What's the real interest behind 'this rare South China Tiger'?
"We will take this opportunity to draw up an overall protection plan and apply for establishing a nature reserve for the South China tiger in areas around the mountain [to attract more investment and tourists to the area?]." Zhu said.
If interested, click here to see more Zhou Zhenglong's (un)authentic wild South China tiger.
Click here to read a Google Translation on how contradictory Zhou Zhenglong's claims.
Update: Some a Chinese netizen in Sichuan Province claimed Zhou Zhenlong's extinct South China Tiger is same as a calender tigher hanged on his wall.
The controversy over the authenticity of photographs of the believed-to-be-extinct wild South China tiger seemed to have come to an end on Friday when a netizen posted online what he claimed was a "convincing proof" that the pictures are fakes - a New Year picture of a tiger that hangs on the wall of his home.
The man, named "panzhihua-xydz", said: "It's the same picture. Even the stripes are identical".
Two suns shined simultaneously in the sky of the northeastern city of Harbin, China, with the real sun brighter than the mock one (left) on Wednesday afternoon, Nov. 14.
Source: Xinhua Tags:The two sun phenomenon began at 3 pm local time and that within 40 minutes the mock sun, to the south of the normal sun, had became dimmer and dimmer as it receded into a piece of rosy cloud and finally disappeared.
The special phenomenon, according to scientists, is a solar halo, or "mock sun", which results from the refraction of ice crystal particles contained in clouds.
The addition of a mock sun is a common sight in polar regions but very rare in other places.
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