Physicists Successfully Trap Antimatter

Artist's conception of antimatter trap.

Physicists say they have trapped antimatter ~ an elusive type of matter rare in the universe ~ for more than 16 minutes, an eternity in particle physics. Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva expect to soon begin experiments on this rare substance.

Antimatter is like a mirror image of matter. For every matter particle, a matching antimatter particle is thought to exist, with the same mass but the opposite charge. Trapping it is difficult, because when it comes into contact with matter, the two annihilate each other. So a container for antimatter can't be made of regular matter, but is usually formed with magnetic fields.

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Australia's UFO Files Now Missing

Australian defense officials say the country’s files on UFO sightings are lost or destroyed. Two months ago, an Australian newspaper submitted a Freedom of Information request for files on UFO sightings across the country. Government officials have come back empty handed.

"The files could not be located,” Australia Department of Defense's FOI assistant director, Natalie Carpenter, told the Sydney Morning Herald, the newspaper that had made the request. Two months spent going through drawers turned up only one UFO-related file, Carpenter said. All other files had been lost or destroyed.

This isn't the first time in recent history that a government body has misplaced UFO files. Earlier this year, Britain's Ministry of Defense released thousands of reports related to UFO sightings in Britain over the past few decades. All files from 1980 to 1982, however, were missing, raising suspicion among conspiracy theorists.

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Tree Rings Say Violent Storms to Continue

Scientists studying ancient tree rings are assembling important benchmark data for studying effects of El Niño and La Niña worldwide, already concluding that our current era ~ because of its warming trends ~ will continue to witness extreme storms.

Due to Earth’s current phase of global warming, which is causing temperatures in the tropical Pacific to rise, the world might see “enhanced El Niño Southern Oscillation variability ~ more severe El Niños and La Niñas, and more extreme climate conditions around the globe,” according to researcher Jinbao Li of the University of Hawaii.

According to LiveScience.com:

The tree rings reveal that over the centuries, the intensity of this climate pattern has been highly variable, with decades of strong El Niño and La Niña events and decades of little activity. The least variability happened during the Medieval Climate Anomaly in the 11th century, whereas the highest variability occurred between the 18th and 20th centuries. 

Many of the El Niño and La Niña events of the last millennium were more intense than the ones scientists have direct data on. Overall, the world has seen a trend of increasing swings to extremes over the past millennium, researchers said. 

These changes in the intensity appear to be linked to the tropical Pacific climate. Samples from lake sediments in the Galapagos Islands, the northern Yucatan in Mexico and the Pacific Northwest suggest that the eastern-central tropical Pacific climate swings between warm and cool phases, each lasting from 50 to 90 years. During warm phases, El Niño and La Niña events were more intense than usual, and during cool ones, they deviated little from the long-term average.

The international team of scientists has peered back into the history of this climate pattern by analyzing trees up to 1,100 years old. Periods of El Niño result in wider tree rings, and periods of La Niña in narrow ones.

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Roswell a Soviet Scheme to Create Panic?

Was the 1947 flying saucer crash at Roswell actually a Soviet ruse to cause Americans to panic? That’s one of the conclusions journalist Annie Jacobsen reached in her new book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base. Her findings throughout the book are based on interviews with 74 people with firsthand knowledge of Area 51.

The saucer that crashed at Roswell was the invention of two brothers who were former aerospace designers in the Third Reich ~ Walter and Reimar Horten. The craft contained several child-size beings ~ possibly the creation of Soviet human experimentation programs ~ who appeared alien.

“The plan, according to my source,” Jacobsen said in an NPR interview, “was to create panic in the United States with this belief that a UFO had landed with aliens inside of it. And one of the most interesting documents is the second CIA director, Walter Bedell Smith, memos back and forth to the National Security Council talking about how the fear is that the Soviets could make a hoax against America involving a UFO and overload our early air-defense warning system, making America vulnerable to an attack.”

The bodies were taken from Roswell to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton and then, in 1951, transferred to the new secret military installation in Nevada, which from then on would be called Area 51.

Click here for the NPR article.

Compilation of Recent UFO Sightings

Sightings of UFOs around the world are increasing, according to several sources. This video compilation of newscasts mostly from the past two years certainly supports that point. It contains some of the best footage yet on these mysterious objects. I'm not sure what to say about the audio clip at the end from the Art Bell radio show regarding the former Area 51 employee.