News Briefs 08-11-2011

Red Pill Junkie had to eat the blue pill today.

• SETI is back in business, thanks to US military funding, and Kepler-22b is at the top of their list of things to do.
• NASA Opportunity rover finds best evidence yet that water once flowed on Mars.
• There's a quiet rumble in science circles that LHC scientists may have spotted the elusive Higgs Boson.
• Sprites & elves caught on camera: mysterious energy bursts above the clouds.
• The Ark of the Covenant may soon be revealed, thanks to a leaky roof. Don't look at the light, Marion!
• How did the Ark end up in Ethiopia? Read The Sign and the Seal by Graham Hancock (Amazon US & UK).
• 40 years after Leary's magical mystery tour, magic mushrooms return to psych labs.
• Who was the Spirit Cave Man, and why does he look like Captain Picard?
• Typecast by turtle-neck sweaters & corduroy jackets with elbow patches, NASA plans to get its groove back. Wait a... I wear a corduroy jacket.
• Dude, where's my drone? Iran gets the keys, Pentagon rethinks its 'Last Starfighter' recruitment method.
• NASA's Voyager spacecraft has reached the edge of the solar system.
• Spielberg's E.T. the Extraterrestrial was originally a horror based on the Kelly Hopkinsville encounter.
• Classic art that gives you the creeps: a few favourites with a Fortean touch.
• Board games in ancient times were a pastime for the elite. The plebs had to make do playing Battleship with Death.
• Coloured vibrating sand, Buddhist singing bowls, and levitating cats megaliths.
• The Irish town of Effin fights online profanity filter. Men from Nantucket join them.
• Synchronicity: childhood correspondence with Tintin creator Hergé lost, and found.

Quote of the Day:

Chances are, when we meet intelligent life forms in outer space, they're going to be descended from predators.

~ Michio Kaku