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A three-year-old video in which a young Chinese boy appears to demonstrate night vision is making the rounds once again, with news sources wondering if the boy really has mutant night vision or freaky alien powers. Yeah...this shouldn't take long. More »
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This video of a weirdly sparkly UFO was taken a few days ago in the skies above Tijuana, Mexico. Could it be the same UFO that taunted police by flying over an airport in Mexicali last week, leading to a high-speed chase? More »
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There's an old urban legend about a state legislature that passed a law redefining pi so that it equaled 3. This story is a myth - but the true story that inspired it is actually even more ridiculous and bizarre. More »
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Remember the dilapidated roadside dinosaurs located near Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park? Believe it or not, those aren't the only prehistoric abominations this country has to offer. More »
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As with pyrokinetics and human magnets, a heaping dose of skepticism is requisite when one hears that a little boy possesses superhuman night vision. According to this news report posted by the Alien Disclosure Group UK — promisingly titled "Alien Hybrid Or Starchild Discovered In China?" — Nong Youhui of southern China has the eyes of a fresh-faced morlock. Real deal or not, this kid is extremely lucky in that he can now easily purloin Paul Stanley's awesome nickname. More »
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Leonid Ksanfomaliti, an astronomer at Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, claims to have detected signs of life in 30-year-old photographs of Venus. Of course, that's completely ludicrous... isn't it? More »
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In the spirit of such Earth-shattering news as Thor's cameo on Google Maps and the Dalek Christ log, Princess Di has now been found haunting a Glaswegian church. She's freaking out confused tourists, given that the afterlife's a crashing bore. More »
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Did Egyptians cross the Pacific Ocean and wander the American Southwest thousands of years ago? In the early 20th century, claims of such a discovery were made by two Smithsonian-funded archaeologists, who spoke of a thriving civilization tucked within a series of caverns carved into the side of a remote portion of the Grand Canyon. What did the archaeologists find? What evidence did they bring back? Hell, did these men even exist? More »
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In day-to-day use, electromagnetic field (EMF) meters are used to diagnose problems with electrical wiring and power lines and to get readings on working appliances. More »
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You may remember that Jesus Christ walked through Siberia to die in Japan, but did you know that Moses skipped the cross-continental jaunt and took a spacecraft instead? Also, were you aware that his tomb is now a tourist trap? More »
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Though desire and its associated effects - lust, love, aggression, ambition - are generally the purview of poets, that hasn't stopped generations of thinkers from trying to explain it scientifically (and pseudoscientifically). Can desire really be described using the scientific method? Here are ten ways that researchers have answered that question with a resounding "yes." More »
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Scholars find a demonic drawing within a mysterious religious artifact taken as a spoil of war over five hundred years ago. At face value, the story of the Codex Gigas sounds like the script for Indiana Jones 5, but behind the gloss lie genuine questions. What exactly is this artifact? Did an evil monk create it in a deal with the devil, as some say? Or was it the work of somebody who just wanted to play mind games with readers? Let's find out what made the Codex Gigas such an enduring mystery - and what's the likely truth of its provenance. More »
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One hundred thousand slaves tug multi-ton blocks across the desert. A complicated series of pulleys lifts each hand-cut stone into the perfect place. This is history's image of ancient Egyptian pyramid construction. More »
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Over at UFO Disclosure Countdown Clock, the UFO experts have put together an end-of-year feature about why 2011 was the year of the Orb. Above, you can see one of several videos they've posted to illustrate their point. This particular video was filmed by an "Orb caller," whose commentary track must be heard to get the full lowdown on my favorite new UFO feature, known as "molecular plasma." More »
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Many corporate work environments are designed to encourage optimum efficiency. Managers want to encourage productivity with the amount of light and music, or discourage socializing by erecting walls. Do any of these tactics work at all? And if they do, how is your work environment influencing you? More »
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What if someone from the future popped up in our timeline and started answering questions from people on internet message boards? That's exactly what John Titor did in the late 1990s. Claiming he was sent from the future on a mission to retrieve an antique computer, he talked with thousands of people online and told stories of futuristic life in 2036. Many of his tales warned of imminent disaster for the world, but he said he couldn't help. More »
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Early last month, prominent social psychologist Diederik Stapel was outed as one of the biggest frauds in scientific history when he admitted to fabricating results in numerous scientific studies. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5864296&view=rss&microfeed=true This week a conference on UFOs, science and consciousness was held in Johannesburg, South Africa. This is the city where gamechanging SF movie District 9 takes place, but apparently that movie has less hold on locals' imaginations than recent flop Cowboys & Aliens does (see io9's glowing review of Cowboys & Aliens here). One of the conference organizers told attendees that aliens have been coming to Earth for millennia to mine for gold. More »
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There be must be some sort of spiritual upheaval going down in the nether regions of the netherworld. How come? Ghosts have been a lot more touchy-feely as of late. The latest report comes out of Herne Bay, England, where 73-year-old Doris Birch has been driven to her wits' end by a groping ghost. As she explained to the This Is Kent news site: More »
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For years, the internet has swirled with rumors about a large number of black plastic containers stored along a stretch of interstate near Atlanta. Conspiracy theorists dubbed the black containers coffins, and hypothesized that they were being stored for a planned or foreseen event that would cause the deaths of millions of North Americans. More »
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Viruses are obviously artificial creations, little pieces of technology designed to download evil software into your cells. This is definitely my favorite new conspiracy rant. The best part is when the narrator, known on YouTube as "adampants," starts acting out all the voices of the cells involved in immune response. "Hey, I'm a white blood cell!" This is a great, trippy video to watch during your afternoon tea. More »
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Depending on where you live, scoring actual marijuana can be difficult and risky. But you can get synthetic cannabinoids at your local gas station. You see them packed into small foil pouches, touting a legal reproduction of a natural high. Local and federal municipalities have taken lengths to remove many from sale, but more continue to pop up. More »
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Yes, crystal skulls are real. Some extremely detailed crystal skulls were excavated from land previously held by Mayan and Aztec civilizations, and they're among the great ancient mysteries. More »
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Every branch of science has its share of "sexy" studies—so called for their supposed tendency to provoke media attention, even in the absence of strong or conclusive findings—but investigations in the field of social psychology are often especially popular targets of the "sexy" label. More »
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Yesterday, we regaled you with the mystery of the Maine blot. Today, even more incontrovertible evidence of the supernatural comes to us from an Ohio Fox affiliate investigating a woman whose house is plagued with amorous ghosts. More »
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Several weeks ago, a motion-sensitive security camera in the Lincoln County Courthouse in Wiscasset, Maine captured footage of a curious splotch traveling down an empty hallway. Nobody was in the courthouse at the time and this mobile blot was filmed in daylight. What will stop the reign of this trespassing smudge? More »
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Ghost hunting isn't just about a willingness to get sucked into a hell dimension with a grin on your face. It's an old profession that requires many different kinds of gadgets and weird devices. Check out the tools that ghostbusters have carried around, both yesterday and today. More »
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Craziness en masse and high schoolers have gone hand-in-hand since the Great Sarsaparilla Kerfuffle of Umpteen-Lickety-Sixty. More »
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Does your town have a Woman in White? Of course it does. There is no town that doesn't have a woman in a white dress who wafts around drafty halls of the local manor, or paces the widow's walk of the local hotel. Find out about the woman in white legend, some local examples, and share your own stories of ghostly women in white. I know you have them. Everyone does. More »
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Popular lore suggests that the street layout of Washington, D.C., was designed so that the streets emanating from the White House would intersect with landmarks in the area to form a pentagram. The designers of the district were Freemasons, and the pentagram is one of a plethora of symbols important to the fraternity. Is there any truth to this strange tale of Washingtonomancy, or is it mere coincidence? Let's take a look. More »
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This is the only picture available of a UFO that has been terrorizing residents in the state of Missouri for the past few days. Apparently the brightly-lit vehicle has been flying low over cars on the highway, and appears to break up into smaller craft. Dozens of witnesses have reported seeing it, boosting Missouri to a "UFO Alert" level 3. The state had the 8th highest number of UFO reports in the U.S. last month. What's going on? More »
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Internet lore and science fiction tales suggest that dropping a nuclear weapon on an erupting volcano would halt the eruption. But would that really be the case? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5844668&view=rss&microfeed=true A man in Galway, Ireland apparently died of spontaneous combustion last year in December. At least, according to a court ruling this week. Michael Faherty's death had been a mystery because coroners and police couldn't explain how the fire that killed him only seemed to have burned the man and his immediate surroundings. More »
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In this clip from the documentary series Ring of Fire: An Indonesian Odyssey, the filmmakers visit qi master John Chang a.k.a. the "Magus of Java" a.k.a. the man whose nickname I want on my business cards. More »
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Lurking in the wild borderlands between Alberta, Canada ski resort town Banff and neighboring Kootenay, a group of unusually large primates live peacefully among the trees. Or so says Todd Standing, a local who says he's found a "Bigfoot colony" and photographed it extensively. You can see Exhibit A, above. More »
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Vaccines are one of the greatest inventions of the last 150 years. They've all but eradicated deadly diseases like smallpox, polio, and measles from most of the world. The same vaccines that allowed civilization to flourish in the twentieth century, however, have become a political hot button in the twenty-first. What changed? It's possible that a whole generation grew up without witnessing firsthand the horrors of deadly contagious disease on children, and so they never understood the value of vaccination. More »
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In 1954, British Pathe — whose Youtube channel brought us those ghastly dead kitten dioramas — did this amazing segment on Catherine Bent, a water diviner whose gift gave her the gait of a woman possessed. Clearly, Ms. Bent was on the payroll of the Ministry of Silly Walks. More »
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All summer, io9 has been offering a $2000 bounty to the person who can send us a picture of an animal that's a genuine cryptid, or mystery animal. We hoped to find a new species, or at least a real version of a long-sought animal from myth. And by gum, we found one! Our panel of experts has debated — and even examined one specimen — and we've come to an agreement on which creature is most likely to be a genuine cryptid among our entries. Meet the white cheetah, a legend since the mid-17th century. Now for the first time since the 1920s, the creature has been spotted. And we have photographic evidence! More »
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How will life on Earth end? International nuclear bombardment? Another asteroid? Enslavement by aliens? The devouring of all of our resources by a Skynet-esque batch of self-replicating microscopic robots? You laugh, but a lot of people (including a batch of anti-science terrorists) believe our demise will come in the form of self-replicating nanobots. So let's take a look at whether such a thing could happen, and what we could do to stop it. More »
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Mind control is a favorite plot device in science fiction. It typically calls for a powerful manipulator to turn other people into drones using some extremely complicated-sounding, but often unexplained, process. It's a neutral power, used by heroes (Obi-Wan Kenobi) and villains (The Riddler) alike. Moral ambiguities aside, let's take a look at whether pop culture mind control could ever work in reality. More »
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