Alien? Captured On Photo - A professional photographer Enrique Sepulveda took a photo recently which seems to show an alien. When he took the photo he noticed a strange figure, less than 2 fee in height. He was taking the photo of the two mounted figures and did not notice the small figure until he downloaded it to his computer. He has had the photo checked and it has been confirmed that it is genuine.

Emley Moor UFO Scare - It has now been stated that the mysterious flying objects that where seen flying over Emley Moor TV mast on Monday afternoon were military jets on exercise. The mysterious flying objects caused quite a scare for the residents of Huddersfield and Sheffield as the five objects flew in perfect formation in the sky. A man in Huddersfield managed to photograph the objects and said they looked as if they were burning up in the atmosphere. A woman in Stannington near Sheffield said that there were five contrails high in the sky and they were moving incredibly fast. But the officials of the Ministry of Defence in London said the UFO's were probably aircraft taking part in a NATO air defence exercise code-named "Clean Hunter" which began on Monday.

Space Station In Peril - Despite more than 800 known flaws and safety violations, some of which could lead to the destruction of the space station and kill its occupants, NASA are still flying crews out to the International Space Station. NASA are in a relentless drive to finish building the $100 billion station on time and accept the risk to avoid cost increases, prevent assembly delays and keep the outpost staffed, records show. According to FLORIDA TODAY magazine, these are the same kinds of safety trade-offs investigators blamed for the explosion of the shuttle Challenger and the disaster of the shuttle Columbia.

The Station's living quarters and Russian-built Soyuz "lifeboat" craft have failed to meet a NASA standard for surviving hits by space junk and micrometeorites. Only a small dime-sized chunk of debris could cause devastation , ripping through the hulls. NASA cannot also be sure that the U.S. segment of the station is bolted together properly because of glitches in a power tool used by astronauts to fasten pieces together. This could, in a worse case scenario cause loose or weakened bolts to shatter or come off, slamming into the station.The 57 foot robot crane that hoists huge station segments into place could fail to stop on command.

Software bugs infest the computer code that runs the station and this threatens to transform usually routine commands from Mission Control into life-or-death situations, 225 miles above the Earth. A NASA flight controller said that "The I.S.S. is a disaster waiting to happen"

The station can now house three people, maximum occupancy for a Soyuz craft, but studies show there is a 50 per cent chance of losing the station if it is left unstaffed for a year. With a crew aboard, the problem is cut to 6 per cent.

Currently onboard are Gennady Padalka and Michael 'Fincke but they face a food, water and spare parts shortage because of the two year grounding of the shuttles. Important onboard systems are broken and in frequent need of repair. And without the shuttle to bring parts, this poses a problem.

A shuttle docked at the station if it accidentally fired some of its 44 steering thrusters could force the outpost to tumble out of control or rip apart both ships. This risk has now been deemed unacceptable and a "must fix" before another shuttle flies to the station has been made.

Paint chips, rocket parts and remnants of exploded satellites that whiz through the stations neighbourhood could strike with the same force as a bullet. But most of the Russian station segments violate NASA safety rules for surviving micrometeorites and debris strikes. The Russian segments that fail to meet NASA standards include the Zverda service module, a command and control centre that also serves as crew quarters, the Pirs docking compartment and airlock and Progress cargo ships.The Soyuz ships that crews would use to escape in an emergency also do not pass the tests. This definitely does not sound good, lets hope NASA manage to solve the situation and put things right, before they get dangerously out of hand.

Final Trek For Cassini - The Cassini spacecraft, with its piggyback Huygens probe from the European Space Agency, is on its final trajectory towards Saturn after an engine burn this week. On Wednesday the craft's main engine burned for 38 seconds to slow it down and put it on the right course to be captured by Saturn's orbit. In the next four years Cassini will loop through Saturn's system, photographing and analyzing the planet and its spectacular rings and 30 or more moons. The Huygens probe will descend into the atmosphere of the moon Titan next January and will gather data as it hurtles to the surface. Cassini-Huygens was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in 1997.

Toxic Rocket Fuel By-Product Is Found In Cows Milk In California - According to a new study by an environmental group, young children and pregnant women who drink milk from California cows may be in danger. There is apparently unsafe levels of a toxic chemical used in rocket fuel found in the milk. The study by the Environmental Working Group says the explosive ingredient in missile fuel has been linked to thyroid damage. "Perchlorate exposure is more widespread than we have been led to believe" said Bill Walker, vice president for the West Coast office of the EWG, a research and advocacy organization base in Washington D.C. There has not been a call for Californians to stop drinking milk or giving it to their children.

Perchlorate has been found in drinking water in more than 20 states, including California, which has extensive ties to the military, defence industry and the space programme. The chemical has been found in the Colorado River which is the major source of drinking water and irrigation in Southern California and Arizona. At the present, researchers are divided abut the effects of perchlorate on the mental development and what exposure levels are safe. In March, California Health Officials said that Perchlorate could brew dangerous at levels above 6 parts per billion in drinking water, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials and some environmental groups say that this standard is too weak. The EPA states a standard of just 1 part per billion. In tests by the Texas Tech University, they found chemical in 31 of 32 samples from milk bought in Los Angeles and Orange Counties. The average level of chemical was 1.3. parts per billion. In Alameda, Sacramento and San Joaquin counties the test found the average level was 5.8 parts per billion in samples. The chemical has been found in many of the state's water sources, which is used to irrigate farmland and grow crops fed to cows.

Belfast - Inter-Planetary Craft Spied? - In Co Monaghan two men working high up a radio mast believe they have seen a top-secret inter-planetary craft. Miles Johnston, of the Irish UFO Research Centre and Dublin-based rigger Terry Malone say they saw a delta-winged craft travel across the sky at ultrasonic speed in just a few seconds to reach the horizon.. They are convinced it was a man-made advanced space craft and said the object was "absolutely enormous" It was huge, high and travelling at some speed said Mr.Malone. He said he had seen "B52's going over and you can hear them buzzing. There was no sound from this object and it was gone in an instant."

UFO's Revisit USAK In Turkey - In the village of Gullubag in the province of USAK, residents claim that UFO's have been seen over their village. Ibrahim Uysal (71) and Ismet Gun (49) claim that on Friday they saw images of bright objects radiating lights over the minarets of the village's mosque. Mustafa Cakiroglu (36) who was working the field in the early morning at the village of Konak said that he also saw the objects. One resident of the nearby village of Narli, Fevzi Can claims that he saw the UFO three years ago and that the other villagers said he was "mad" and a "liar" for speaking out and getting money from television channels for his odd stories. But now, other people claim to have see the same thing he saw three years ago. On December 5th 2002, a 19 years old boy in the city of Afyon captured the images of bright flying objects on his video camera on two successive nights and days.

Blind River's Ahead By 10 Minutes - When you read this story, it reminds you of something out of the X-Files, but apparently, something in the Blind River area is moving electrically powered clocks ahead by 10 minutes. Hydro One is not surprised but stumped. It apparently started time jumping this last Monday. the local residents started talking about it on the Wednesday because many thought someone has been altering their clocks. When 10 residents in the Blind River area called an Elliot Lake radio station on Wednesday morning asking the staff if they knew why the clocks in Blind River were jumping 10 minutes ahead.

The types of clock effected appear to be very specific - electrically-powered digital clocks on stoves and microwaves, as well as clock radios. VCR or television clocks do not appear to be effected. People were going to bed after altering their clocks to the right time and then when they got up, they were 10 minutes ahead again. A call to the Hydro One deepened the mystery further. Daffyd Roderick, Hydro's media spokesman, said the events "were very unusual. It was not a problem that had occurred before." He said "There may be something else going on here. But something affecting only clocks is highly unlikely to be hydro." They plan to keep looking into the matter.

Strange Power Surge In Arizona - Upto 65 thousand people in Arizona were left in the dark last week after a huge power surge, and people are blaming strange lights that were seen in the sky as the possible cause for the black out. The disturbance was so massive it shut down all 3 units at the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant. Less than 48 hours later in the direction of the plant the lights were captured on video. Astronomer Steve Kates who is known throughout the Valley as "Dr.Sky" said he believes the video is legit, and says the sighting is special and similar to the "Phoenix Lights" which were spotted back in 1997.

UFO's Seen Over Manchester - 6 mysterious objects have been filmed flying at incredible speeds and in formation across the skies of Manchester. A Mr. Harrison was in his garden at Rossendale with his wife when both of them saw 6 distinctive vapour trails appear on the western horizon. The objects were flying "in some sort of formation." They travelled fast in parallel and in pattern that was maintained from horizon to horizon. The whole event was videoed and perfect trails appear on the tape. But despite zooming in, no craft or object at head of the vapour trail was spotted.

Speculation about the trails was that they may have been meteors and investigators now say the mysterious aircraft were actually F-16 fighter jets of the Royal Netherlands Air Force. who are taking part in a massive Nato exercise - Operation Clean Hunter - across Europe and the UK. The exercise involves planes attempting to take and defend air space and is conducted from a base in Germany. Fights are conducted during the day to minimise noise and cover an area which extends from mid-France to Denmark and from the United Kingdom to mid-Poland. When Mr. Harrison was informed of this, he was disappointed to learn the truth."I thought it would be something much more unusual than the Dutch air force" he said.

Tesla Crop Circle - There has not been many crop circles this season in the U.K. They have been fairly dull - that is - until now.A new circle has been spotted and appears to be a diagram for an electrical transistor designed over 100 years ago by Nikola Tesla. Tesla, a little known engineer is credited with inventing among other things, the radio, a/c electricity and fluorescent lights.

The circle has been recreated in a wheat field near Alton Barnes, the global capital of crop circles. Michael Soper, of Contact Internations said "I'm very interested in this one. It's almost as if this is the last piece of a jigsaw which we have not been able to put together yet, and we are doing it backwards. The circle clearly shows coils, connectors and a box with the wires curling out and around it." Soper said, "It has far too many features to be done by people in that short amount of time - how was it was done overnight on the shortest night of the year."

Cassini-Huygens In Orbit Around Saturn - The Cassini-Huygens has successfully entered into orbit around the planet Saturn. The probe which cost £1.9 billion fired its main engine for 95 minutes to enable it to slow sufficiently to be captured by the gravity of the sixth planet. The spacecraft a join US-European mission has travelled for more than 6 years and covered nearly two billion miles. It will now start a four-year study of the ringed planet and it's 31 known moons. The huge distance between Saturn and Earth means that signals take more than 80 minutes to arrive and tracking data revealed that the long burn came to an end just a minute earlier than expected. It is hoped that scientists will learn more about what Saturn is made of, it's atmosphere, molten core and its mysterious rings. These are thought to be remains of shattered comets, asteroids and moons.

UFO Seen Over Durban - Roshnie Naidu of Phoenix was watching TV when she noticed a bright light flashing through her curtains. She never bothered to have a look to see what it was, but the light did not go away and when she looked out of her window she was amazed. The object she saw would change shape from being circular to oval. She immediately went and woke up her husband and he saw the object too. They got hold of their video camera and managed to capture the unidentified object that was in the sky. According to her husband, Shrirama the object was in the sky for about three hours. It disappeared as the sun came up and it became lighter. Roshnie told the Daily News that she had not seen anything like it before, "It looked like a massive ball of light, much brighter than the sun, with blue and purple colours filtering through." Weather forecaster Ntobeko Nkangana said that no objects were picked up in the sky that morning. and weather balloons are released only at midnight and midday. The weather balloons remain in the sky for a maximum of two hours.

Durban UFO - According to Professor of physics, Arthur Hughes, from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the UFO spotted flying over Phoenix last week was nothing more than the planet Venus. He has viewed the video and said the object on the film was not an unidentified flying object. He stated that "It could not have been a fireball as they don't usually last that long." He dismissed it as being a satellite as they pass over quite quickly. "Satellites go around the earth in 90 minute cycles," he said. He also stated that no other calls had been received and he had heard of no other reports of unusual sightings for that period. "It was the planet Venus. Venus is visible in the early parts of the morning" he said. But Roshnie Naidu, who saw the object along with her husband says she knows what she saw and it was definitely not Venus. Her husband Shrirama, who also saw the object said that they both could not have been mistaken.

French UFO's spotted - The French Signes (Signs) website has just reported that 2 triangle-shaped UFO's were seen in Paris on the 30th June. The witness to the UFO's says that he looked at the sky from his balcony when all of a sudden he saw a group of luminous balls in triangular formation pass. 15 seconds later another triangle completely different appeared on the other side of the balcony and turned behind a building. According to the witness, it did not resemble any plane or anything that he had seen before. He submitted two photo's that he had tampered with so that they would resemble that night.

Worldwide Sightings Of UFO's - UFO's have now been spotted all over the world, the latest sightings in Louisiana, South Africa and Chile, which makes this a worldwide phenomenon, and yet there are still people who say it is all nonsense.

On May 24th, UFO researcher Joe and Linda Montaldo of Metairie, Louisiana videotaped a dark, oblong shape with flashing blue, green, red and yellow lights. It hovered for about 11 minutes over Lake Pontchartrain. In South Africa, Roshnie Naidu saw a bright light along with her husband, which I mentioned before. In Chile, a luminous sphere sailed slowly across the sky and as it did, the craft changed colours, bringing the traffic in a large city to a standstill. Drivers got out of their cars to get a better look and could not believe their eyes. The phone lines of the local radio station were jammed as people rang in to say they had seen the object. A gentleman rang in from Tres Puentes, in the north and said that there was a light that shone intensely. This call was at 6.30.am. People working at the fisheries phoned in and said that the light had been seen over that same area for five days in a row. Afred Vera, managed to take some photo's of the object, but out of 14 taken only 4 was reasonably and showed a burning ball, something red, green and blue.

1,000 Year Height For Sunspots - The Sun is more active now than it has been in the previous 1,000 years according to evidence from ice cores taken from Greenland and examined. Over the last century the number of sunspots has risen, and at the same time the Earth's climate has become steadily warmer. The trend is being amplified by gases from fossil fuel burning.

The activity of Sunspots has been monitored since 1610 and they provide the longest-running direct measurement of our star's activity. The Sun has a 11 year cycle of activity and it has been noted that between about 1645 and 1715, few sunspots were seen on the Sun's surface. This period has been called the Maunder Minimum after the English astronomer who studied it.

This period coincided with a spell of prolonged cold weather which was referred to as the "Little Ice Age" and scientists think there is a link between the two events. There is evidence of earlier coolings in the Earth's climate which can be seen by tree-ring markings and measurements that show slow growth due to prolonged cold. Scientists looking at the past 1,150 years say that the Sun has never been as active as it has been during the past 60 years. There has been a steady increase in the numbers of sunspots during the past few hundred years.

The data gathered suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate which is causing the world to get warmer, but as the temperature of the Earth has continued to increase the number of sunspots has remained roughly constant. This is put down to human-produced greenhouse effect caused by the combustion of fossil fuels.

Is Time Travel Possible? - Apparently there is a secret place in the Arizona mountains which was discovered in 1956 where time is altered. A local Indian told someone about a mysterious stone archway which was discovered in the 1800s, by three Indians who where out hunting. They started chasing each other through it, but one of the three never emerged through it at the other side. The two remaining Indians fled. Then in 1948 another person came upon the arch in a storm. When he looked through it, he saw a blue, cloudless sky on the other side.

The arch is about 7 feet high and 5 feet wide. and when a group of friends were camping near the arch one night, they heard a rumbling of hooves and whinnying of approaching horses, but they could not see anything. The sounds suddenly ended and in the morning, they could find no signs of hoof prints or anything. Historical figures have also been seen near the arch and some have seen a dark-robed Jesuit priest who became transparent and then vanished. Other people have seen a troop of Spanish soldiers who also vanished.

Once during a two week adventure a chap found himself near the canyon that leads to the site and has he had not been to the Arch for 4 years decided to make a visit. Below to his left was a canyon-where none had existed. He soon discovered that he was in the same canyon that led toward the hill he had just scaled. He was more than 250 yards back down the canyon on a different slope and now he was facing south - he had mysteriously been transported to the new location. Thinking that he was looking west, he was really looking east seeing the canyon that he had just hiked. He was so afraid that he might not be living in his own time that when he got back to his Jeep he was relieved.

Large numbers of geodes - a type of quartz that conducts electricity have been found in the vicinity of the arch and people have experienced vibrations, their arm hair standing on end and strange ear pressure when in the area have been experienced.

The last person to visit the arch stated that the top portion of the archway had collapsed and all that remains are the two columns. This story reminds you very much of a "Time Gate" a portal to other dimensions, worlds etc.

Blue Moon - In the month of July 2004 there will be two full moons and one of them will be a "blue moon". On the 31st July if you look up into the sky at the moon you will see that it is Blue. According to modern folklore, a Blue Moon is the second full moon in a calendar month. As a rule, months have only one full moon, but occasionally a second one appears. They are separated by 29 days while most months are 30 or 31 days long. When this occurs it is possible to fit two full months in a single month. This works out to be every two and a half years on average. July has already had one full moon on the 2nd July and the next one is due on the 31st July, and this by definition is due to be a Blue Moon. So, will it really be "blue". The date of the full moon, all by itself does not effect the colour.

In 1883, when the Indonesian volcano named Krakatoa exploded, scientists liken the blast to a 100 megaton nuclear bomb. 600 km away, people heard the noise as loud as a cannon shot and plumes of ash rose to the top of the Earth's atmosphere. The moon turned BLUE. That was the reason. ash-clouds filled with particles about 1 micron wide which is the right size to strongly scatter red light, whilst allowing other colours to pass. White moonbeams shining through the clouds emerged blue, and sometimes green. For years Blue moons persisted after the eruption and people also saw lavender suns and noctilucent clouds. The ash caused such vivid red sunsets that fire engines were called out in New York, Poughkeepsie and New Haven.

Other volcano's have turned the moon blue as well. People saw blue moons in 1983 after the eruption of the El Chichon volcano in Mexico and reports of Blue moons were reported when Mt St Helens erupted in 1980 and Mount Pinatubo in 1991. The key is having in the air lots of particles slightly wider than the wavelength of red light (0.7micron) and no other sizes present. This is rare, but volcanoes sometimes spit out such clouds, as do forest fires.

On September 23rd 1950, several fires that had been smouldering for several years in Alberta suddenly blew up into a major fire. Winds carried the smoke eastward and southward with unusual speed and the fire produced large quantities of oily droplets of just the right size. When the smoke cleared enough and the sun was visible, it was lavender or blue. Two days later observers in England reported an indigo sun in smoke-dimmed skies. This was followed by an equally blue moon that evening. So don't forget to go out to observe the moon on the night of the 31st July, and you might just be lucky enough to see a shining "Blue Moon".

China Aims For The Moon - Sun Laiyan, the head of China's space agency has said that China is aiming to send a spacecraft to the Moon in three years time. In a wide ranging interview with the BBC. Sun Laiyan outlined the steps China would take in it's Space Missions. These would include, the first step - a unmanned missions from 2007.

The second step to orbit and land on the Moon and send back data.

The third step is taking samples and coming back to Earth.

They also plan to build a Chinese Space Station. He stated that "China would be happy to work with other nations, including the US but only on equal footings." Western analysts believe that China currently have rockets capable of sending craft to the Moon and back, but they need more powerful boosters for the landing. In the next few years, more Chinese astronauts will be launched into Earth orbit, following the path taken last October by Yang Liwei.

Weather Extreme's - We are always reading and hearing stories about Global Warming and the coming of a new Ice Age but the recent weather which has been experienced in some parts of the World makes for some worrying reading.

In South America just recently, winter storms have violently struck several countries. In Argentina six cold-related deaths have been reported, and in Peru there has been thousands of dead farm animals.

Brazil has recorded below freezing temperatures as well. In Argentina temperatures reached minus 11 degrees Celsius and in Tierra del Fuego, in the extreme south six people died over the weekend. An elderly man was found dead in a park and one construction worker died of hypothermia. Two couples in separate incidents have been killed by gas poisoning after they left their stoves on to keep their homes warm.

In South Peru heavy snow and rain has left 53 people homeless and damaged thousands of houses. Helicopters have been dropping food and clothing to isolated villages. 34 tonnes of shelter material have been dispatched to affected areas along with medicine and "75,000 farm animals, including cows, sheep and llamas, have been killed." said the Peruvian Agriculture Ministry.

In the State of Rio Grande do Sul on Sunday, the temperature reached minus 6.8. degrees Celsius (19.8 degrees F), the lowest mark of the year, whilst in Santa Catarina the coldest temperature in 10 years was recorded. minus seven degrees (19.4.degrees F).

Chileans are bracing themselves for heavy rains and violent winds this week. Two weeks ago, winter weather claimed four lives in Chile, while floods damaged thousands of homes. We must be grateful that it is only raining here.

Asteroid Attack - A stray asteroid is what scientists think killed off the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago and even a small space rock hitting the Earth could be devastating for mankind. Now European space bosses are to launch a missile strike on an asteroid to see if it is possible to deflect it from its path. The missions will be named "Don Quixote" and is planned for launch between 2010 and 2015.

The aim of the mission is to investigate the internal structure of an asteroid and at the same time develop and test the technology necessary to see if an asteroid can be deflected from its course. Two spacecraft named, "Sancho and Hidalgo" will be sent to an asteroid about 550 yards across. "Sancho" will arrive first and orbit the asteroid for seven months during which time it will send probes to the surface and measure the effect of the second probe "Hidalgo" smashing into it at 22.370 mph. It is thought the impact is unlikely to destroy the asteroid, but may be enough to slow it down or change its orbit. "Sancho" will then move in to observe.

Next July NASA's Deep Impact mission will slam a copper probe into a comet for research. In the future if we ever find that an asteroid is on collision with the Earth just giving it a small nudge might just make it miss the Earth, thereby saving millions of lives which might happen if it hit us.

Life On Mars - On a recent radio programme Professor Vittonrio Formisano who works for the European Space Agency's orbiting Mars Express craft said he was about to announce that there is "Life on Mars". and he would release this information in a few days time in Paris. Ammonia has been discovered on Mars, and because ammonia only survives for a short time in the Martian atmosphere, it must be constantly replenished. Only living microbes can do this, so therefore there must be life somewhere on Mars. According to Nasa, "Ammonia could be the key to finding life on Mars". Ammonia is a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen. Nitrogen is rare in the Martian atmosphere, no form of terrestrial life can exist without it, but the presence of ammonia means that Martian microbes are hoarding it. Nasa say, "There are no known ways for ammonia to be present in the Martian atmosphere that do not involve life". It is hoped that the twin U.S. Rovers that landed on the Red Planet in January will be able to help solve the ammonia question, since they are programmed only to look at the geology of the planet.

Strange Objects Falling From The Skies - During a thunderstorm in Ocean Springs, fish were falling from the sky. Gulf Islands National Seashore Ranger Melissa Perez and volunteer Adam Wilson were pelted with small, very cold fish while on the park's pier. On Tuesday around 6pm. when the storm had eased briefly, they went out to locate minnow traps that had been left on the pier and noticed that they had gone but whilst looking around something began falling into the water. All of a sudden, two icy cold fish hit the deck of the pier and one hit Perez's hat. The fish that hit the deck were small, around 3 inches long. Downtown another Ocean Spring resident was in her car when hail hit her. The hail was bigger than marbles, bouncing off the hood and hitting the windshield.

In Springfield, Orvil Mitchell found a 2 and half pound curved chunk of dark metal, (about the size of his hand an heavy) which had slammed through the top of his old camper next door to his house. He can only think it came from the sky and is space junk.

According to the National and Aeronautics and Space Administration, on average, one non-functional spacecraft, launch vehicle or other piece of catalogued debris has fallen to Earth every day for more than 40 years. Most of this burns up on re-entry into the atmosphere, but those that don't generally fall into the oceans or onto sparsely populated regions such as Siberia or the Australian outback.

People have found storage tanks, generally - as big as SUV's and some weighing more than 500 pounds. Luckily, no one has been hurt yet, but last year a man made object crashed through the roof of an apartment in Middletown, Ohio whilst a woman and child was present.

When Skylab fell from the skies in 1979, it landed, in parts in the Indian Ocean and western Australia but at the time it generated panic. There are 20,000 pieces of space debris up there and there are 100 to 200 spectacular "large entry" events each year but the odds of being hit by space junk is one in a trillion. Every day, the Department of Defence track 13,000 objects in space and during a recent 12 day period, two objects plummeted to Earth, one probably burned up and the other, the Russians intentionally dropped into the Pacific.

Asteroids - Between Mars and Jupiter over a million large asteroids, each several kilometres wide are orbiting the Sun. Sometimes there are violent collisions and it was thought that the resulting fragments from these collisions would need several million years to reach the Earth. Now, new measurements from the Noble Gas Laboratory of ETH Zurich has shown that the Earth could be reached much sooner. When collisions occur in the Asteroid Belt the asteroids are completely destroyed and shattered into millions of pieces.

Computer simulations have predicted that most of these fragments will eventually fall into the sun, but some of them will eventually hit the Earth as meteorites. Until now, when this might occur has only been theoretically calculated but a new measurement has been developed and can bring a more accurate prediction. The team has established that it could take just a few hundred thousand years for such an object to collide with the Earth. Fragments from asteroids in space are constantly being hit by cosmic radiation and this creates noble gases from nuclear reactions.

After measuring the cosmogenic inert gases which have accumulated the travel time from original body to Earth can be calculated. The higher the concentration, the longer the meteorite was underway. This newly developed method from the Institute for Isotope Geology makes it possible to confirm the theories about the behaviour of asteroid fragments in space and predict future collisions with our planet.

Homing Pigeons Lost During Race - Is the Earth Magnetic Field in the process of changing? - In Stockholm, Sweden organizers of a race for homing pigeons are still wondering what has happened to 1,500 birds which were released for a race. They are all missing. Of the birds released only about 500 have returned to their lofts after the 93 mile flight between the cities of Ljungby and Malmoe in southern Sweden.

The weather was perfect for the race, no rain, no thunder and no strong winds. so what happened? In past years the birds have made the journey in about two hours. A spokes person who has worked with the pigeons since 1960 said he had not experienced anything like it before and said that the birds might have been thrown off course by subtle changes in the earths magnetic field. No reported sightings of the birds have been seen in Sweden.

New Martian Meteorite Discovered - Researchers from the U.S. Antarctic Search for Meteorites Programme have just announced that they have discovered a Martian meteorite 750 kilometres from the South Pole. The chunk of black rock weighting 715 grammas was found during the 2003-2004 summer season. The wrinkled rock dubbed MIL 03346 is one of more than 1,000 samples recovered by the team. The analysis at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History identified MIL 03346 mineralogy and texture as Martian. It is the seventh recognized member of the nakhlite group of meteorites from Mars, which travelled to Earth after an impact on Mars some 11 million years ago.

What Did We Leave Behind On The Moon? - 35 years ago Neil Armstrong left a footprint on the moon. A boot-shaped depression in the grey moondust and it is still there today in the Sea of Tranquillity. Just 100 feet away something else is still on the Moon. Surrounded by footprints in; the moondust lies a 2 foot wide panel which has over 100 mirrors pointing at the Earth. This is the "Lunar laser ranging retroreflector array."

This was put there by Apollo Astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong on the 21st July, 1969. and 35 years later it is the only Apollo science experiment still running.. Physics professor Carroll Alley of the University of Maryland was the project's principal investigator during the Apollo years and he still follows it's progress today. Using the mirrors "We can ping the moon with laser pulses and measure the Earth-moon distance very precisely. We can learn about the moon's orbit and test theories of gravity as well."

The round trip travel time between the moon's distance and Earth's is better than a few centimetres. Over the years researchers have traced the moon's orbit and have learned some remarkable things. The moon is spiralling away from Earth at a rate of 3.8.cm per year. WHY? - Earth's ocean tides are responsible. The moon probably has a liquid core!

The universal force of gravity is very stable. Newton's gravitational constant G has changed less than 1 part in 100billion since the laser experiments began. Physicists have also used the laser results to check Einstein's theory of gravity, the general theory of relativity and so far so good. But some physicists believe that Einstein theory is flawed, but the lunar laser ranging might find it. Nasa and the National Science Foundation are funding a new facility in New Mexico, the Apache Point Observatory Lunar-ranging Operation or appropriately, "Apollo" for short. The will use a 3.5 meter telescope with good atmospheric "seeing" and examine the moon's orbit with millimetre precision, 1 0 times better than before. What will they discover with that? we will have to wait and see.