Mt Cook village residents are stumped but not spooked by recent supernatural experiences in the national park's oldest mountain hut.

Mountain guides, visitor centre employees, a helicopter pilot and a cafe manager have all reported paranormal experiences in and around the old hut high up on the Hooker Glacier.

The Hooker hut was built nearly 100 years ago, is a three-hour walk from the visitor centre and sits about 1100 metres above Mt Cook village.

Department of Conservation (DOC) mountain guide Jane Morris and visitor centre assistant Monica Yeoman experienced the surreal when they spent the night of their lives in the hut last Friday.

Ms Morris said she understands their account of paranormal activity could be cause for ridicule.

However, she believes there has been a lack of investigation into the countless reports of spooky happenings in the hut.

Both of them explained the spooky happenings in and around the hut and the lack of investigation surrounding events.

The pair left the village after work and arrived at the hut around dusk on March 20. It wasn't until they had finished dinner and hopped into their sleeping bags that things started to rattle in the night.

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Female 'Vampire' Unearthed in Venice

March 14, 2009 -- An archaeological dig near Venice has unearthed the 16th-century remains of a woman with a brick stuck between her jaws -- evidence, experts say, that she was believed to be a vampire.

The unusual burial is thought to be the result of an ancient vampire-slaying ritual. It suggests the legend of the mythical bloodsucking creatures was tied to medieval ignorance of how diseases spread and what happens to bodies after death, experts said.

The well-preserved skeleton was found in 2006 on the Lazzaretto Nuovo island, north of the lagoon city, amid other corpses buried in a mass grave during an epidemic of plague that hit Venice in 1576.

"Vampires don't exist, but studies show people at the time believed they did," said Matteo Borrini, a forensic archaeologist and anthropologist at Florence University who studied the case over the last two years. "For the first time we have found evidence of an exorcism against a vampire."

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The lost world beneath the Antarctic ice

British scientists are about to mount one of the boldest-ever missions, to search for life forms that have survived for possibly millions of years in a frozen "lost world" beneath an ancient ice sheet.

This week, a team of Antarctic scientists has been given the go-ahead to drill through a two-mile-thick sheet of ice that has sealed a sub-glacial lake from the rest of the biosphere for at least as long as Homo sapiens has walked the Earth.

They hope to find species that have survived below the ice sheet since it formed between 400,000 and two million years ago. Finding life in such an extreme environment would be one of the most important discoveries of the century, raising the prospect of searching for extra-terrestrial life on Europa, a moon of Jupiter where life is thought to exist beneath a frozen ocean. The scientists plan to use sophisticated ice-drilling technology developed in the UK to penetrate the ice cap and enter the liquid-water world of Lake Ellsworth in West Antarctica, one of about 150 sub-glacial lakes scientists have recently mapped with ice-penetrating radar.

Read more : http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-lost-world-beneath-the-antarctic-ice-1639247.html

Nasa launches search for second Earth

The launch of the Kepler spacecraft from Cape Canaveral in Florida today marks the beginning of the most ambitious hunt for planets like ours in distant solar systems.

The Kepler telescope will spend three-and-a-half years staring deep into a starry region of the Milky Way, in the direction of the constellations Cygnus and Lyra, in the hope of spotting Earth-sized planets as they pass in front of their stars.

Every half hour, Kepler will record the brightness of 100,000 stars using a 95 megapixel camera built by the British firm e2v. The camera is so sensitive, it could spot the imperceptible dimming of a car headlight as a fly wanders across it.

The mission will focus its attention on planets in the "Goldilocks region" of space, where conditions are just right for liquid water to exist. Some of these worlds could potentially be home to life as we know it.

By the end of the mission, we may have a clearer idea of our place in the universe, and whether warm, wet rocks like Earth are the exception rather than the rule.

source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2009/mar/07/kepler-probe-habitable-planets-extraterrestrial-life

The Pyramids of Giza vs the Mars craters of Tharsis

The following similarities between layout of the Pyramids of Giza
and craters of Tharsis on Mars are most likely a coincidence...

HST photo of Mars showing Olympus and 3 craters of Tharsis area.

Above: surface of Mars map showing Olympus and Tharsis (left).
Below: close-up of the Olympus and Tharsis area.

Superimposed satellite image of the pyramids and NASA photo of Tharsis on Mars.

source : http://www.world-mysteries.com/giza_vs_tharsis_mars.htm

Secrets of Brain

1. Your brain loves color. Use colored pens – good quality, not gel pens – or use colored paper. Color helps memory.

2. Your brain can effectively focus and concentrate for up to 25 minutes (adults). Take a 10-minute break after every 20-30 minutes of studying. Go do some chores: rake the lawn, iron a shirt, vacuum. Come back after 10 minutes and do another focused, intense session.

3. Your brain needs to be rested to learn fast and remember best. If you are tired take a 20-minute nap first otherwise you are wasting your study time.

4. Your brain is like a motor: it needs fuel. You wouldn’t put dirty fuel in your Lamborghini (if you had one) or you wouldn’t put low quality fuel in a rocket, would you? Well, your brain is a much more valuable, intricate machine than either of those so feed it properly. Junk food and imitation food and all the chemicals and preservatives weaken both your body and your mind. In fact, a recent study in England showed that your IQ is affected by your diet.

5. Your brain is like a sea of an electro-chemical activity. And both electricity and chemicals flow better in water. If you are dehydrated you just don’t focus as well. Drink enough water (colored liquids – pop, juice, coffee, etc. – are not the same). Often times headaches are connected to dehydration, too.

6. Your brain loves questions. When you come up with questions in class or when reading a book, your brain automatically searches for answers, making the learning faster. A good question has more than one answer.

7. Your brain and body have their own rhythm cycles: there are times during the day when you are more alert than others. You will save time learning if you study during your peak periods. If you have a part-time job that happens during your peak period you may wan to reconsider if it is wise to be giving your employer your best learning time.

8. Your brain and body communicate constantly. If your body is slouched down, the message the brain gets is that “this is not important” and so it doesn’t pay as close attention. In any learning situation, sit up and lean forward to help keep your mind alert. Buy a good quality, adjustable office chair.

9. Your brain is affected by smells. Use aromatherapy to keep your brain alert. Peppermint, lemon and cinnamon are good ones to experiment with.

10. Your brain needs oxygen. Get out there and exercise.

11. Your brain needs space. Be sure that you are not trying to study in a small cramped area.

12. Your brain needs your space to be organized. One recent study showed that kids who grow up in tidy, organized homes do better academically. Why? Because by being trained to organize the outside environment, the brain learns to organize the internal knowledge…which makes recall faster. Buy a 4-drawer legal-sized filing cabinet.

13. Your brain cells in the hippocampus, a part of the brain that deals with putting information from short-term to long-term memory, are destroyed by cortisol, which is created when you are stressed. So, yes, stress affects memory. How do you get rid of cortisol? Exercise.

14. Your brain doesn’t know what you can’t do until you tell it.
What are you telling it? Listen to your self-talk. Stop the negativity. Replace it with more positive, encouraging talk.

15. Your brain is like a muscle: it can be trained and strengthened, at any age. No excuses. Stop being a mental couch potato. Professional athletes practice every day; you can practice homework everyday. If “you don’t have any”, make some up for yourself. Read ahead, review…do SOMETHING.

16. Your brain needs repetition. It is better to do short frequent reviews than one long review because what counts is how many times your brain sees something, not how long is sees it in one sitting.

17. Your brain can understand faster than you can read. Use a pencil or finger to “lead” your eyes. By doing so you help your eyes move more quickly.

18. Your brain needs movement, especially if you are mostly a kinesthetic (body movement) learner instead of a visual or auditory learner. You might find your productivity go up if you have a standing desk. Buy one or make one by raising your desk/table on blocks. This allows you to move more easily and stay more alert.

19. Your brain seeks patterns and connections. When you are learning something, ask yourself, “What does this remind me of?” This will also help your memory because it connects the new knowledge to something you already know.

20. Your brain loves fun. We learn in direct proportion to how much fun we are having. Learning is life. Live it up!

source : http://www.world-mysteries.com/

A Link between Egypt and Americas?

According to the official view there was no contact between the Old World and the New World before Columbus. Yet numerous similarities have been found that suggest a link between Egypt and the Americas:

• Both have huge pyramids, aligned to the cardinal points

• Both have structures built with megalithic stones and extremely fine joints

• Both exhibit intriguing bumps on many unfinished stone blocks (Picture 1)

• Both employed a unique style of construction using "L" shaped corners

• Both use the same style of metal clamps to hold the huge stones in place

• Both used the process of mummification to preserve and honor their dead

These compelling similarities suggest that both ancient cultures were influenced by a sophisticated common source.

source : http://www.world-mysteries.com