Talpiot Tomb: The Lost Tomb of Jesus Christ and His Family?

The Talpiot Tomb is a rock-cut tomb discovered in 1980 in the East Talpiot neighborhood, five kilometers south of the Old City in East Jerusalem (Israel). The archaeological team determined it to be from the Second Temple period, which lasted from about 538 BC to AD 70. It is also assumed that a tomb of this type would have belonged to a wealthy Jewish family.

The tomb was discovered by construction workers who were laying the foundations for an apartment complex when preparatory demolition work accidentally uncovered the tomb's entrance. Construction of the apartment buildings was completed in 1982. Due to the fact that some children got into the tomb and played inside, the authorities sealed the entrance for safety reasons.

In 2005, a team led by biblical historian James Tabor, who is professor and chair of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, and the controversial filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici, opened the tomb again and claimed to find a 2,000-year-old engraving on an ossuary, which they say depicts Jesus' resurrection. The limestone burial box contained human bones and an inscription that has been interpreted as "Yeshua bar Yehosef" ("Jesus, son of Joseph").

Altogether, ten limestone ossuaries were found, with six of them bearing epigraphs, although only four of them were recognized as such in the field. The archaeological team determined the ossuaries to be of little note, and delivered them to the Rockefeller Museum for analysis and storage. In addition, three skulls and crushed bones were found on the floor of the tomb, indicating that the tomb had been disturbed in antiquity. Their footage was incorporated into the 2007 documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus, in which the authors claimed that the Talpiot Tomb was the burial place of Jesus of Nazareth, as well as several other figures from the New Testament. Of course, this claim was disputed by many archaeologists and theologians, as well as language and biblical scholars.

Analysis of mitochondrial DNA that was performed by Lakehead University on the remains found in the ossuary marked "Jesus son of Joseph" and the one marked "Mariamne" or "Mary" (who some claim to be Mary Magdalene) found that the two occupants were not blood relations on their mother's side. Based on these tests, the makers of the documentary suggest that "Jesus" and "Mariamne" were probably married "because otherwise they would not have been buried together in a family tomb," but the remains were not dated using radiocarbon to further sustain this supposition. Neither was any announced DNA testing performed on the others ossuaries to see if any familial relation existed there. Additionally, scholars argue the DNA tests only prove that they did not have the same mother and they could easily have been father/daughter, half brother/sister, cousins, or any number of possibilities that do not include a matrilineage line.

Shroud of Turin: The Real Face of the Son of God?

The Shroud of Turin is a length of linen cloth bearing the image of the face and body of a bearded man who appears to have suffered physical trauma in a manner consistent with crucifixion. There is no consensus yet on exactly how the image was created, but it is believed by some that the 14ft-long linen cloth was used to bury Christ's body when he was lifted down from the cross after being crucified 2,000 years ago, despite radiocarbon dating placing its origins in the Medieval period.

The image is much clearer in a black-and-white negative than in its natural sepia color. The negative image was first observed in 1898 on the reverse photographic plate of amateur photographer Secondo Pia, who was allowed to photograph it while it was being exhibited in the Turin Cathedral. The shroud is kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, northern Italy.

The origins of the shroud and its image are the subject of intense debate among theologians, historians, and researchers. Scientific and popular publications have presented diverse arguments for both authenticity and possible methods of forgery. A variety of scientific theories regarding the shroud have since been proposed, based on disciplines ranging from chemistry to biology and medical forensics to optical image analysis.

In 1978, a detailed examination carried out by a team of American scientists found no reliable evidence of how the image was produced. In 1988, a radiocarbon dating test was performed on small samples of the shroud. The laboratories at the University of Oxford, the University of Arizona, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology concurred that the samples they tested dated from the Middle Ages, between 1260 and 1390.

In March 2013, experiments conducted by scientists at the University of Padua (Italy) dated the shroud to ancient times, a few centuries before and after the life of Christ. The tests dated the age of the shroud to be between 300 BC and 400AD, but with an error margin of 400 years due to the unknown influences of temperature and humidity on the samples during their lives.

The Catholic Church has neither formally endorsed nor rejected the shroud, but in 1958 Pope Pius XII approved of the image in association with the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus. More recently, Pope Francis and his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI have both described the Shroud of Turin as “an icon.”

As well as can be expected, the shroud continues to remain one of the most studied and controversial archaeological objects in human history.

Jehoash Inscription: A Legitimate Tablet which Describes Renovations of King Solomon's Temple?

The Jehoash Inscription is the name of a controversial artifact rumored to have surfaced in the construction site or in the Muslim cemetery near the Temple Mount of Jerusalem. Chiseled in ancient Hebrew and dated to the ninth century BCE, the tablet describes renovations of the First Temple, which is said to have been built by King Solomon, that were ordered by Jehoash, son of King Ahaziah of Judah. It corresponds to the account in II Kings 12:1-17, in which the king laments the state of the temple and commands that money which the priests collect from the people be used to fix it up.

While some scholars support the antiquity of the patina, which in turn strengthens the contention that the inscription is authentic, the scientific commission appointed by the Israeli Minister of Culture to study the Jehoash tablet concluded that various mistakes in the spelling and the mixture of different alphabets indicated that this was a modern forgery. The stone was typical of western Cyprus and areas further west. Patina over the chiseled letters was different from that on the back of the stone and could easily be wiped off the stone by hand.

In a press conference in Jerusalem on June 18, 2003, the Israel Antiquities Authority commission declared the inscription a modern forgery.

The Israel state confiscated the sandstone artifact, charging collector Oded Golan (yes man, the same antiquities collector who is the James ossuary's owner) with forging it and other antiquities and dealing in them.

The court didn't actually rule in 2012 whether the tablet, ossuary, and various other artifacts were genuine or not, just that the state hadn't proven that they were fake, and therefore Golan couldn't be charged with dealing in fake antiquities. Despite the court's ruling, the state refused to return the tablet to Golan and petitioned to bring the lawsuit to the Supreme Court, which has now had its say. On October 17, 2013, a panel of three justices rejected the state's argument 2-1, and ordered that the tablet be restored to Golan.

James Ossuary: Archaeological Evidence of Jesus of Nazareth?

The James ossuary is a 2,000-year old chalk box which was used for containing dead bones. Carved into one side of the box there is an Aramaic inscription that reads, "Ya'akov bar-Yosef akhui diYeshua" (English translation: "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus"). The inscription is very significant for adherents of Christianity because, if genuine, it might provide archaeological evidence of Jesus of Nazareth.

For a 90-year period, from 20 B.C. to A.D. 70, the Jewish burial custom was to place the body in a cave for a year or so and then retrieve the bones and put them in a bone box—ossuary—that could then be placed in a niche in the family tomb.

Several hundred such boxes from that era have been found, 215 of which have inscriptions. Only two boxes mention a brother.

The box was originally tested in Israel by scientists at the Geological Survey Group, who judged it to be about 2,000 years old. But the inscription divides the believers and the non-believers due to the Israeli Antiquities Authority, which determined in 2003 that the inscriptions were forged at a much later date. Also, statistical analyses of ancient names suggest that in contemporary Jerusalem, there would be an average of 1.71 people named Ya'akov (James) with a father Yosef (Joseph) and a brother named Yeshua (Jesus).

According to the James ossuary's owner, an Israeli engineer and antiquities collector named Oded Golan, the box came from the Silwan area in the Kidron Valley, southeast of the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem. Golan purchased the artifact from a Jerusalem-based dealer in the 1970s.

In December 2004, the James ossuary's owner was charged with 44 counts of forgery, fraud, and deception, including forgery of the Ossuary inscription. In 2012, Golan was acquitted of the forgery charges but convicted of illegal trading in antiquities. He was also fined 30,000 shekels and sentenced to one month in jail for minor non-forgery charges related to the trial. The judge said that this acquittal "does not mean that the inscription on the ossuary is authentic or that it was written 2,000 years ago."

Saitaphernes' Golden Tiara

On April 1, 1896, the Louvre announced that it had purchased, for 200,000 gold French francs, a gold tiara that had belonged to the Scythian king Saitapharnes . According to experts at the Louvre, a Greek inscription on the tiara confirmed an episode dating to the late 3rd century or early 2nd century B.C.

At 7 inches in height and weighing a little more than a pound in solid gold, the pointed dome-like tira was decorated with a lower, narrower band that shows genre scenes of Scythian daily life; an upper, wider band shows episodes from The Iliad, including Agamemnon and Achilles quarreling over Briseis.

Shortly after the Louvre exhibited the tiara, a number of experts challenged its authenticity. Among them was the German archaeologist Adolf Furtwängler, who noted stylistic problems with the tiara's design and questioned the lack of aging apparent on the artifact. For several years, the Louvre defended the authenticity of its treasure. Eventually, news of the story reached Odessa.

Almost immediately, questions about its origins arose, and the crown's amazing state of preservation was the key clue.

In 1903, a Russian jeweler from a small town near Odessa, Israel named Rouchomovski told the Louvre's researchers that he made the tiara per order for a certain Mr. Hochmann, who gave him books showing Greco-Scythian artifacts on which to base the work. It was a gift "for an archaeologist friend."

Taken by the desire to acquire the tiara, the Louvre had missed warning signs that could have saved them considerable embarrassment. The tiara was flawed; there were traces of modern tools, there was modern soldering (though cleverly concealed), and an inscription was raised in relief.

The Louvre still owns the Tiara of Saitaphernes. In 1954, the museum included it in its "Salon of Fakes," along with eight Mona Lisas.

Ancient Persian Princess

This mummy was allegedly found after an earthquake near Quettaand, Pakistan. The alleged Persian princess had been put up for sale on the black antiquities market for 600 million Pakistani rupees, the equivalent of US$6 million. On October 19, 2000, Pakistani authorities were alerted. The "sellers" were accused of violating the country's Antiquities Act, a charge which carries a maximum sentence of ten years in prison.

It was started in November 2000, when the international press reported an amazing find: a mummy, which was claimed to be that of an ancient Persian princess, over 2,600 years old. The mummy was encased in a carved stone coffin inside a wooden sarcophagus and was wearing a golden crown and mask. Of course, the Persian princess was immediately hailed as a major archaeological discovery.

The princess was wrapped in ancient Egyptian style. All of the internal organs had been taken out of her body in the same way that the ancient Egyptians mummified their dead. Her cloth-bound body was dressed with golden artifacts, with an inscription on the golden chest plate that read, "I am the daughter of the great King Xerxes, I am Rhodugune." The situation led archaeologists to speculate that she might have been an Egyptian princess married to a Persian prince, or a daughter of Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty of Persia. However, mummification had been primarily an Egyptian practice, and mummies had never been found in Persia before.

When the curator from the Karachi National Museum, Dr. Asma Ibrahim, began her investigation into the mummy, a different story began to emerge. There were some strange puzzles about this ancient princess. The inscriptions on the mummy's breastplate had some grammatical errors, and there were peculiarities in the way she had been mummified. Several detailed operations common to Egyptian mummification had been omitted. It began to look like the mummy was not the princess she was supposed to be; perhaps she was a more ordinary ancient mummy dressed up to be a Persian princess by forgers trying to increase her value. So, forensic experts all over the globe analyzed the mummy and her magnificent trappings and discovered that she is an elaborate fake.

Sadly, this mummy had an even darker history. Computerized tomography scans and X-ray photographs of the body inside the mummy revealed that this was no ancient corpse but a woman who had died in the recent past, and that her neck was broken. An autopsy confirmed that this young woman may indeed have been murdered to provide a body for the fakers to mummify, a body that they intended to pass off as an ancient mummy for millions of dollars on the international art black market.

The Piltdown Chicken

Early in 1912, Charles Dawson, an amateur archaeologist, and Arthur Smith Woodward, Keeper of Geology at the Natural History Museum, joined forces to follow what they termed "evidence of the evolutionary 'missing link' between apes and humans".

The findings during excavations at Piltdown, England included a piece of a thick human-like skull in Pleistocene gravel beds, a jawbone with two teeth, and a variety of animal fossils and primitive stone tools.

Believing the skull fragments and jawbone to be from the same individual, Smith Woodward made a reconstruction. It suggested an early human with a large brain, indicating a level of intelligence that set it clearly apart from the apes. The jawbone, ape-like but with human-looking teeth, linked the skull with its supposed evolutionary ancestors. So, they decided that the evidence added up to an early human relative who lived about 500,000 years ago.

In the 40 years since the original 1912 announcement of Piltdown Man, increasing numbers of ancient human fossils have been discovered, most notably from Africa, China, and Indonesia, but also from Asia and Europe. However, none of these discoveries showed the large brain and ape-like jaw of Piltdown Man. Instead, they suggested that the jaw and teeth became human-like before the evolution of a large brain.

As the discrepancies became too many to ignore and as new dating technology emerged, investigations on the Piltdown fossils recommenced.

At the Natural History Museum in the late 1940s, Kenneth Oakley ran a series of fluorine tests that made use of fluorine's tendency to accumulate in calcium-containing organic matter such as bones and teeth. Oakley discovered that the fossils were probably less than 50,000 years old, not nearly old enough to be from a species with such ape-like features.

Further research proved that the skull and jaw fragments actually came from two different species, a human and an ape, probably an orangutan. Scratches on the surface of the teeth, visible under the microscope, revealed that the teeth had been filed down to make them look human. Also, it discovered that most of the finds from the Piltdown site had been artificially stained to match the local gravel.

In November 1953, Piltdown Man hit the headlines again, this time to be revealed as a hoax. The so-called "missing link" between humans and apes now became a sensation as a sophisticated and infamous scientific fraud. But who did it, and why? Many people have been suspected but no one really knows the answer.

The Fiji Mermaid

In mid-July 1842, an English gentleman named Dr. J. Griffin, who was a member of the British Lyceum of Natural History, arrived in New York City bearing a real mermaid that was supposedly caught near the Fiji Islands in the South Pacific.

Soon after this, the showman P.T. Barnum tried to convince Dr. Griffin to display the mermaid at his museum. Dr. Griffin agreed to exhibit it for a week at Concert Hall on Broadway. Barnum distributed ten thousand copies of a pamphlet about seductive mermaids throughout the city. In August 1842, huge crowds showed up for the exhibit.

Throughout all of this, the deception of the public had been two-fold. First, Dr. Griffin was a fraud. He was no English gentleman. In fact, there was no such thing as the British Lyceum of Natural History. Griffin's real name was Levi Lyman. He was Barnum's accomplice and this had all been done to give the mermaid an appearance of scientific respectability. Second, the famous mermaid was constructed with half of the skeleton of a monkey (torso and head) sewn to the back half of a fish and then covered in papier-mâché, and Barnum knew it.

According to one theory, the Fiji mermaid was destroyed when Barnum's museum burned down in 1865. But this is unlikely, since she should have been at Kimball's Boston museum at that time. More likely, she perished when Kimball's museum burned down in the early 1880s.

There is no accurate information about how this fraud was finally discovered, but the Fiji mermaid will be present in the top 10 cryptozoology frauds.

Tongue Patch

If you've tried all the diets under the sun and still can't lose weight, cosmetic surgeon Nikolas Chugay has got your back. Actually, make that your tongue. There is a new medical procedure that will help you lose weight by making it painful to eat.

This extreme weight loss method is a medical procedure that involves stitching a small piece of polyethylene mesh onto a patient's tongue, making it painful to ingest solid foods and forcing a low-calorie, liquid diet. "The patch is a pattern interrupt," said Dr. Nikolas Chugay, the California-based plastic surgeon who developed the concept. "It is uncomfortable to eat solid foods, so people will all of a sudden remember, I am only to eat liquids."

Over 60 people have opted for the surgery, resulting in an average weight loss of 20 pounds (over the one-month period the postage-stamp-sized piece of fabric stays stitched on). "These are people who have been through every conceivable diet; they've tried everything and for some reason they just cannot stop eating," he said.

Imaginary Gastric Band

A gastric band (the LAP-Band) is a restrictive band placed around the patient's stomach that gives the sensation of a full stomach after eating smaller portions of food, thus letting the patient eat less and lose weight without going hungry. But fitting the band requires surgery, with potential side effects – so here's a novel idea; making obese patients believe that they have an "imaginary" gastric band through hypnosis!

A therapist convinced Marion Corns, 35, she had had surgery to fit the band by talking her through the procedure while in a trance. Hospital smells were even pumped into the room to boost the effect. Housewife Marion, who has slimmed from 15st 6lb to 11st 7lb, said: “Bizarrely I can even ‘remember' being wheeled into theatre, the clink of the surgeon's knife and smell of the anaesthetic.”

She spent £780 on five sessions with a therapist at the Elite Clinic in Marbella after her weight ballooned despite trying numerous diet aids. Afterwards Marion felt her stomach had tightened and she was full up on just a small portion of food.

Now she is losing 3lbs a week and her dress size has plummeted from size 22 to 14 in four months.

With Paintball Shots

Forget fad diets and gastric bands, the latest innovation in the war on obesity is fat busting paintball sessions. A UK paintball company has announced what is believed to be the world's first ever paintball fitness classes. During the sessions, people wanting to get fit will be invited to dodge paintballs while running an assault course, while the paintball centre's staff attempts to shoot them.

Organisers UK Paintball is targeting obese people with the sessions, which they believe will massively help with weight loss. The sessions will run as part of a ten week course, costing £199 per person, and it's believed that each participant can expect to burn between 800-1000 calories a time. Three or four shooters will be employed during the sessions to ensure that safe areas are kept to a minimum and that participants have to continue to run throughout.

Objects such as oil drums, felled trees, tyre walls and makeshift huts will all be removed to offer as little protection as possible to participants – encouraging them to keep moving and stay clear of the marksmen.

Instaling a Nasogastric Dripping Tube

It's truly disturbing when doctors come up with seemingly fad diets that could prove dangerous, but that appears to be happening all the time and most of them are also pretty successful. The latest to join the trend is an American doctor who is providing a drastic and quick weight-loss method, the K-E Diet. It involves putting food into your body through the nose, using a dripping tube.

The K-E diet stands for Ketogenic Enteral Nutrition diet and is the work of Dr. Oliver di Pietro, from Florida. He promises to help anyone shed 20 lbs. in as little as 10 days. As part of the diet, dieters have to get a small nasogastric tube inserted into their nose going all the way to the stomach, through which a liquid solution drips constantly. The solution supposedly contains a mix of protein, fat and water and makes up 800 calories. A few hours of this and a process called ketosis is said to be triggered, which burns body fat due to the lack of carbohydrates. The fat is burned but the muscle and water in the body remain untouched. Dieters who want to achieve the best results aren't supposed to eat anything for a period of 10 days and also have to carry around the bag of nutritious fluid everywhere they go.

The Fermi Paradox

The Fermi Paradox is an argument originally made by physicists Enrico Fermi and Michael H. Hart, who presented an apparent contradiction between how many alien civilizations are thought to be out there and our lack of evidence for their existence.

If the Drake Equation is right and there are literally millions of intelligent species in our galaxy alone, it is puzzling that we have received no signals or messages from any of them. This is known as the Great Silence.

There have been some incredibly interesting solutions proposed over the years, one of which includes the Simulation Theory.

Universe as Computer Simulation

This theory supposes that because of the overwhelming likelihood of technological singularities occurring in the universe, it is quite likely that advanced civilizations–either us in the future, or aliens in a distant galaxy–have created or will create simulations. Since the number of these simulations would be in the billions, Bostrom submits that it's actually quite likely we are living in some sort of a computer simulation.

Perhaps what is most odd about the Simulation Theory is that there are actually prominent scientists and physicists who not only think it's possible, they are actively conducting experiments to prove it. A team of German physicists think that eventually we will be able to paint a better portrait of the so-called numerical simulation that is our universe. They are working to create a mini-simulation that require physical constraints in order to run. They want to see if those same constraints exist in our own universe.

Lending even more support to this mind-numbing theory, theoretical physicist S. James Gate has discovered something extraordinary in his recent String Theory research. Essentially, deep inside the equations we use to describe our universe Gate has found computer code. And not just any code, but extremely peculiar self-dual linear binary error-correcting block code. That's right, error correcting 1s and 0s wound up tightly in the quantum core of our universe.

Project Bluebeam: the Government Will Engineer a False Flag Supernatural Alien Invasion

Project Blue Beam is a highly controversial conspiracy theory. Originally proposed by Canadian journalist Serge Monast in 1994, it holds that the New World Order will use advanced holographic technology in order to create a false flag alien invasion and/or a worldwide religious "awakening" in order to achieve servitude by the masses and acceptance of a one world government and religion and possibly depopulation efforts as well.

There are supposedly 4 parts to the implementation of Project Blue Beam. These stages include:

~The dissolution of major religions due to archaeological discoveries disproving them.
~A holographic "space show" in which deities and aliens appear as our overlords (it is not clear how these two would coexist).
~Telepathic Electronic Two Way Communication, via ELF(Extra Low Frequency), VLF (Very Low Frequency), and LF (Low Frequency) waves, whereby people will think they are being spoken to by the new true God or extraterrestrial overlords.
~Use of worldwide microchips to fabricate horrifying supernatural events that will make people desperate for the New World Order.

The Singularity: We will transcend biology and live as posthuman Gods

Futurists like Ray Kurzweil say in the coming decades humans will experience a technological singularity by which we will transcend biology itself. Intelligent civilizations such as ours, says Kurzweil, are destined to evolve into super-intelligent, possibly machine-based beings whose computational powers grow exponentially.

After such a singularity, we would be able to harness the power of our own sun in order to accomplish interstellar feats only dreamed of in science fiction, such as creating Dyson Spheres and literally saturating the known universe with consciousness.

Some progressive thinkers like Noam Chomsky have labeled the theory science fiction, while others question the classist undertones of the theory's transhumanist enthusiasts.

Smell: The plant that smells like rotting flesh

A port-a-potty, burning hair, a skunk, the band's dirty clothes after a P-Funk concert in the 1970's…what could be smellier and emit a funkier odor than these nemesis' of the nostrils?

How about the Rafflesia arnoldii? Not only is this one of the world's smelliest plants, but it also produces the largest individual flower in the world! The Rafflesia is also nicknamed the Corpse Flower and with good reason – the odor from the flower smells like rotting flesh. Anything that foul attracts flies and the insects do their part to help pollinate the plant, ensuring its survival. The flower's rotten smell comes from the reddish tentacle-like, branched ramentae, inside the corolla of petals.

Don't judge a flower by its scent though. The plant is one of the three national flowers in Indonesia, where it is a protected species and produces a rather cool looking bloom, which can be up to 3 feet in diameter.

Sounds like a perfect flower for zombies!

Sight: The brightest light on Earth

If ever in the wrong hands, who knows what havoc an evil-doer could create with this next entry? That might sound like a line from a comic book, but the Texas Petawatt laser is the highest-powered laser in the world, thus creating the brightest light on Earth.

The light bulb in my lamp nearby is 72 watts. The Texas Petawatt laser is greater than one petawatt –one hundred thousand million watts . That's 2,000 times more powerful than all of the power plants in the United States.

Todd Dimitre of the Texas High Intensity Laser Science Group leads The Petawatt project. What is the function of such a powerful and bright laser? Dimitre explains, “We will use the laser to create and study matter at some of the most extreme conditions in the universe, including gases at temperatures greater than those in the sun and solids at pressures of many billions of atmospheres. This will allow them to explore many astronomical phenomena in miniature. They will create mini-supernovas, tabletop stars and very high-density plasmas that mimic exotic stellar objects known as brown dwarfs.” Yeah, prof, we couldn't have said it any better ourselves.

The laser is brighter than the sun, but its power lasts only for a very short period of time, a 10th of a trillionth of a second in this case -- or 0.0000000000001 second.

We hate to see what their electric bill is like!

Taste: The chili pepper that makes your head explode

Are you a fan of spicy food? Do you like to sweat when you eat? If you do, try the Carolina Reaper, the world's hottest pepper.

Cultivated by Ed Currie, founder and president of the PuckerButt Pepper Company in South Carolina, this pepper would probably ruin most people's day after eating it! Maybe there's a reason why his company is called PuckerButt!

Currently rated as “the world's hottest chili pepper” by Guinness World Records, the pepper averages 1,569,300 on the Scoville Heat Unit scale, with peak levels of over 2,200,000. In comparison, a regular jalapeno pepper comes in at around 8,000 units.

With the Carolina Reaper recently beating the Trinidad Maruva Scorpion as the hottest pepper out there and with hot sauce such a booming industry, you can bet there are cultivators working around the clock to produce an an even hotter pepper!

Proceed with caution and make sure there is a restroom nearby when eating!

Hearing: A meteor blast creates the loudest explosion ever recorded

On June 30, 1908 near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, an explosion of massive proportions occurred. This wasn't just any blast; this explosion is what is known as the Tunguska Event, the loudest single impact event on or near Earth in recorded history.

The Tunguska Event was most likely caused by the airburst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 5 to 10 kilometers (3–6 mi) above Earth's surface. Even though the meteor burst in the air, it is classified as an impact.

The explosion knocked down approximately 80 million trees over an area of 2,150 square kilometers (830 sq mi). Scientists believe a shock wave from the blast would have measured 5.0 on the Richter scale. Fatalities were non-existent due to the event occurring in such a remote area, however, if it had happened in a city, it would have caused incalculable damage.

How loud was it? Scientists have estimated the blast to be equivalent to 10 to 15 megatons of TNT. That's about a 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

Spider-Goats

What do you get when you cross a spider with a goat? It sounds like it should be the start of a joke, but the spider goat project reflects just one of many disturbing genetic hybridisation projects. Genetic scientists have incorporated selected spider DNA into goat embryos to engineer a hybrid spider goat – and here's why…. Spiders can produce an amazing substance, highly desirable, more valuable than gold – that substance is spilder silk.

Nexia Biotechnologies in Quebec along with scientists at the U.S. Army's Soldier Biological Chemical Command (SBCCOM) in Natick, Mass, have taken the specialized silk producing gene from a spider and inserted it into a goat embryo. The result is a goat……that looks like a goat, acts like a goat, but produces milk which contains proteins which, when treated, produce a very close imitation of the valuable spider silk. A single goat only produces small amounts of the desired material, so an extremely large herd is required to acquire useful quantities.

Modified Mosquito to fight Mosquitos

A genetically modified (GM) strain of malaria-resistant mosquito has been created that is better able to survive than disease-carrying insects.

It gives new impetus to one strategy for controlling the disease: introduce a transgenic mosquito carrying a gene that confers resistance to the malaria parasite into wild populations in the hope that they will take over. These mosquitoes had another gene inserted into them to make their eyes fluoresce, to distinguish them from the ordinary strain. The insect carries a gene that prevents infection by the malaria parasite. The researchers caution that their studies are still at an early stage, and that it could be 10 years or more before engineered insects are released into the environment. The approach exploits the fact that the health of infected mosquitoes is itself compromised by the parasite they spread. Insects that cannot be invaded by the parasite are therefore likely to be fitter and out-compete their disease-carrying counterparts.

genetically engineered milk

A Dutch biotechnology company called Pharming has genetically engineered cows, outfitting females with a human gene that causes them to express high levels of the protein human lactoferrin in their milk. According to Pharming's website, the protein —which is naturally present in human tears, lung secretions, milk and other bodily fluids—fights against the bacteria that causes eye and lung infections, plays a key role in the immune system of infants and adults and improves intestinal microbial balance, promoting the health of the gastro-intestinal tract. “Since the protein has the ability to bind iron, is a natural anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral, is an antioxidant and also has immunomodulatory properties, large groups of people might benefit from orally administered lactoferrin,” the company literature reads. Scientists have tested the toxicity of the protein—isolated from the cows' milk—on rats. They found that—even at the high level of 2,000 mg recombinant human lactoferrin per kg body weight—orally consumed human lactoferrin has no adverse effects to complement all the supposed benefits already mentioned.

Nazi scientist created a twin-town

The steely hearted "Angel of Death", Josef Mengele, whose mission was to create a master race fit for the Third Reich, was the resident medic at Auschwitz from May 1943 until his flight in the face of the Red Army advance in January 1945. His task was to carry out experiments to discover by what method of genetic quirk twins were produced – and then to artificially increase the Aryan birthrate for his master, Adolf Hitler.

Historians claim Mengele's notorious experiments may have borne fruit. For years scientists have failed to discover why as many as one in five pregnancies in a small Brazilian town have resulted in twins – most of them blond haired and blue eyed. But residents of Candido Godoi now claim that Mengele made repeated visits there in the early 1960s, posing at first as a vet but then offering medical treatment to the women of the town. Shuttling between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, he managed to evade justice before his death in 1979, but his dreams of a Nazi master race appeared unfulfilled.

King Tooth

On August 30, 2007, the eve of Malaysia's 50th Independence Day, Rathakrishnan Velu (or Raja Gigi, as he is known locally) broke his own world record for pulling train with his teeth, this time with 6 coaches attached weighing 297.1 tons over a distance of 2.8 metres at the Old Kuala Lumpur Railway Station. Raja Gigi, from Tampin in Malaysia learned a technique of concentrating his powers to any part of his body from an Indian guru at a young age of 14.

The Lion Whisperer

Animal behaviourist Kevin Richardson says he relies on instinct to win the hearts and form an intimate bond with the big cats. He can spend the night curled up with them without the slightest fear of being attacked. His magic works not only work for lions but other animals such as cheetahs, leopards and even hyenas do not hold a threat against him. Lions are his favourites and its a wonder how he can play, carress, cuddle with them whose teeth are sharp enough to bite through thick steel. Its a dangerous job but to Kevin, its more of a passion for him.

Mister Eat-it-All (Michel Lotito)

Michel Lotito (born 1950) is a French entertainer, famous as the consumer of undigestables, and is known as Monsieur Mangetout (Mister Eat-it-all). Lotito's performances are the consumption of metal, glass, rubber and so on in items such as bicycles, televisions, a Cessna 150, and smaller items which are disassembled, cut-up and swallowed. The aircraft took roughly two years to be 'eaten' from 1978 to 1980. He began eating unusual material while a child and has been performing publicly since 1966. Lotito does not often suffer from ill-effects due to his diet, even after the consumption of materials usually considered poisonous. When performing he consumes around a kilogram of material daily, preceding it with mineral oil and drinking considerable quantities of water during the 'meal'. He apparently possesses a stomach and intestine with walls of twice the expected thickness, and his digestive acids are, allegedly, unusually powerful, allowing him to digest a certain portion of his metallic meals.

The Incredible Brain (Daniel Tammet)

Daniel Paul Tammet is a British high-functioning autistic savant gifted with a facility for mathematical calculations, sequence memory, and natural language learning. He was born with congenital childhood epilepsy. Experiencing numbers as colors or sensations is a well-documented form of synesthesia, but the detail and specificity of Tammet's mental imagery of numbers is unique. In his mind, he says, each number up to 10,000 has its own unique shape and feel, that he can "see" results of calculations as landscapes, and that he can "sense" whether a number is prime or composite. He has described his visual image of 289 as particularly ugly, 333 as particularly attractive, and pi as beautiful. Tammet not only verbally describes these visions, but also creates artwork, particularly watercolor paintings, such as his painting of Pi.

Tammet holds the European record for memorising and recounting pi to 22,514 digits in just over five hours. He also speaks a variety of languages including English, French, Finnish, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Romanian, Estonian, Icelandic, Welsh and Esperanto. He particularly likes Estonian, because it is rich in vowels. Tammet is creating a new language called Mänti. Tammet is capable of learning new languages very quickly. To prove this for the Channel Five documentary, Tammet was challenged to learn Icelandic in one week. Seven days later he appeared on Icelandic television conversing in Icelandic, with his Icelandic language instructor saying it was "not human."

The Whirlpool Galaxy

Also known as Messier 51a, M51a, or NGC 5194, the Whirlpool Galaxy is an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy located at a distance of approximately 23 million light-years in the constellation Canes Venatici. It is one of the most famous spiral galaxies in the sky. The galaxy and its companion (NGC 5195) are easily observed by amateur astronomers, and the two galaxies may even be seen with binoculars. The Whirlpool Galaxy is also a popular target for professional astronomers, who study it to further understanding of galaxy structure (particularly structure associated with the spiral arms) and galaxy interactions.

M81

The big and beautiful spiral galaxy M81, in the northern constellation Ursa Major, is one of the brightest galaxies visible in the skies of planet Earth. This superbly detailed view reveals its bright nucleus, grand spiral arms and sweeping cosmic dust lanes with a scale comparable to the Milky Way. Hinting at a disorderly past, a remarkable dust lane runs straight through the disk, below and right of the galactic center, contrary to M81's other prominent spiral features. The errant dust lane may be the lingering result of a close encounter between M81 and its smaller companion galaxy, M82. Scrutiny of variable stars in M81 (aka NGC 3031) has yielded one of the best determined distances for an external galaxy -- 11.8 million light-years.

Supernova 1987A

Two decades ago, astronomers spotted one of the brightest exploding stars in more than 400 years: a doomed star, called Supernova 1987A. This image shows the entire region around the supernova. The most prominent feature in the image is a ring with dozens of bright spots. A shock wave of material unleashed by the stellar blast is slamming into regions along the ring's inner regions, heating them up, and causing them to glow. The ring, about a light-year across, was probably shed by the star about 20,000 years before it exploded. In the next few years, the entire ring will be ablaze as it absorbs the full force of the crash. The glowing ring is expected to become bright enough to illuminate the star's surroundings, providing astronomers with new information on how the star expelled material before the explosion. The image was taken in December 2006 with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. (Credit: NASA, ESA, and R. Kirshner; Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

Hoag's Object

A non-typical galaxy of the type known as a ring galaxy, the appearance of Hoag's Object has interested amateur astronomers as much as its uncommon structure has fascinated professionals. Is this one galaxy or two? This question came to light in 1950 when astronomer Art Hoag chanced upon this unusual extragalactic object. On the outside is a ring dominated by bright blue stars, while near the center lies a ball of much redder stars that are likely much older. Between the two is a gap that appears almost completely dark. How Hoag's Object formed remains unknown, although similar objects have now been identified and collectively labeled as a form of ring galaxy. Genesis hypotheses include a galaxy collision billions of years ago and perturbative gravitational interactions involving an unusually shaped core. The above photo taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in July 2001 reveals unprecedented details of Hoag's Object and may yield a better understanding. Hoag's Object spans about 100,000 light years and lies about 600 million light years away toward the constellation of Serpens. Coincidentally, visible in the gap is yet another ring galaxy that likely lies far in the distance.