area 51 loses mystique for some after accusations of hoax

'area 51' touts jaw-dropping claim about ufo's
from bookbuzz: Just the term "Area 51" sets UFO theorists trembling with excitement. This week, a book titled Area 51 enters the list at No. 27. Author Annie Jacobsen interviewed 74 people including 32 who worked and lived at the secret Nevada military facility (which the U.S. government has never admitted exists). Area 51 covers the history of the Cold War, but the reason it's climbing the list faster than aliens swarming a spaceship? Jacobsen's jaw-dropping claim about a flying saucer which reportedly crashed in July 1947 in Roswell, N.M. The pilots weren't aliens but Russian or German children and teenagers who were surgically made to resemble the Martians in Orson Welles' 1938 The War of the Worlds radio broadcast, the book claims. Jacobsen says Stalin may have secretly collaborated with Nazi Josef Mengele in hopes of spreading panic in the U.S.

related: jfk worried moon mission a 'stunt,' new tapes show

restored 'trip to the moon' debuts on cannes opening night

from hollywood reporter: Before CGI and 3D, there was French film pioneer Georges Melies, the forerunner of modern-day movie magic. His newly restored 1902 short A Trip to the Moon will precede Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris to open up this year’s Cannes Film Festival. A must for any film student or special effects lover, the 14-minute space fantasy was adapted by Melies from the work of Jules Verne, and shot in a studio he built in the Paris suburb of Montreuil. Filled with dazzling set pieces and uncanny visual trickery, the most iconic being an image of a rocket ship poking into the moon’s eye, the movie went on to achieve instant success both in France and the U.S.

The massive restoration, budgeted at E400,000 and jointly financed by Serge Bromberg’s Lobster Films (Henri-George Clouzot’s Inferno), the Groupama Gan Foundation and the Technicolor Foundation, began in 1993 when a rare, hand-tinted print was uncovered in Barcelona. In 1999, Lobster began digitizing the footage frame by frame, and over ten years and 13,000 frames later, the film can now be seen in a full-blown color version for the first time since its debut more than a century ago. Although silent film purists may gasp at the restorers’ choice to add a catchy soundtrack by French electro duo Air (Lost in Translation), Moon should continue its voyage after Cannes to play plenty of fests and film museums before it lands on DVD.

nasa may have found remnants of black hole at galactic center

from technoccult: NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has unveiled a previously unseen structure centered in the Milky Way. The feature spans 50k lightyears and may be the remnant of an eruption from a supersized blackhole at the center of our galaxy... One possibility includes a particle jet from the supermassive black hole at the galactic center. In many other galaxies, astronomers see fast particle jets powered by matter falling toward a central blackhole. While there is no evidence the Milky Way’s black hole has such a jet today, it may have in the past. The bubbles also may've formed as a result of gas outflows from a burst of star formation, perhaps the one that produced many massive star clusters in the Milky Way's center several million yrs ago.

related update: nasa schedules press conference regarding shuttle woes (nov22 at johnson space center *wink*)

1859 carrington event

NASA website recaps 1859 Carrington Event the largest known solar flare observed by English astronomer Richard Carrington. "Just before dawn the next day, skies all over planet Earth erupted in red, green, and purple auroras so brilliant that newspapers could be read as easily as in daylight. Indeed, stunning auroras pulsated even at near tropical latitudes over Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Hawaii." "Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set the telegraph paper on fire. Even when telegraphers disconnected the batteries powering the lines, aurora-induced electric currents in the wires still allowed messages to be transmitted." This entry on NASA website reassures "...statistics suggest that Carrington flares are once in a half-millennium events". Here is a link to an audio version of 1859 Carrington Event.