Minotaur

According to Greek myth, there was only one Minotaur - the child of Pasiphae, Queen of Crete and wife of King Minos, and a white bull sent by the sea god Poseidon.
The Minotaur had the body of an enormous human, with the head and shoulders of a bull. His body - particularly the animal parts - was covered in brown hair, and his horns were wickedly sharp, with a span wider then a man's outstretched arms. Given his fearsome reputation, it seems likely that he measured around 10 ft (3 m) high.

King Minos trapped his stepson in the great Labyrinth below the palace of Knossos and kept the Minotaur satisfied by feeding him 14 young men and women exacted as tribute from the Athenians. According to one version of legend, this tribute was made every nine years, suggesting the Minotaur could live off stockpiled nutrient reserves for long periods of time. However, other versions suggest the tribute was annual, or that Minoans were slaughtered instead of Athenians eight years out of nine.
The Minotaur was probably about 30 when the Athenian hero Theseus came to Knossos, entered the maze-like Labyrinth where the Minotaur lived and killed it, and was at his physical prime. This suggests a total lifespan of around 50 years.
Many observers said that the Minotaur was invulnerable to any weapon but his own horn driven through his brain. This is probably an exaggeration, although a Minotaur's size, speed, strength and ferocity, combined with a pair of deadly horns, must have made it a formidable adversary.

Knosses was destroyed by some form of cataclysm around 1450 BCE. Barbarian invasion from the mainland was once the favored explanation, but now a volcanic eruption and subsequent tidal wave are thought to have been responsible. By 1100 BCE, the Minoan civilization had faded.
In art and mythology, at least, the Minotaur lives on. Theseus and the Minotaur were favorite subjects for painters and craftsmen of ancient Greece. The tale continues to be one of the most popular of ancient legends. In the Middle Ages, Dante imagined the Minotaur as the brutal guardian of the Seventh Circle of Hell, a symbol of perversion.

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Chimera

The Chimaera - or Chimera - was said to be made out of three different creatures: lion, goat and serpent. A savage beast, sprouting fire from its mouth, it devastated the land until it was killed by the hero Bellerophon, who flew over it riding his winged horse Pegasus.
The Chimera has been described as female, and that may be something related to her name that in ancient Greek means 'young she-goat'. Despite this rather humble name, she was of divine origin. Her father was the giant Typhon and her mother the half-serpent Echidna. She had as brothers Cerberus (the hound of Hell), Sphinx, Hydra (the nine-headed water snake), and Orthrus (another multi-headed dog).

She was of divine race, not of men, in the fore part a lion, in the hinder a serpent, and in the middle a goat, breathing forth in terrible manner the force of blazing fire. And Bellerophon slew her, trusting the signs of the gods.

Homer, Iliad 6.181

The Chimaera who breathed raging fire, a creature fearful, great, swift footed and strong, who had three heads, one of grim-eyed lion, another of a goat, and another of a serpent. In her forepart she was a lion; in her hinderpart a dragon; and in her middle part, a goat, breathing forth a fearful blast of blazing fire. Her did Pegasus and noble Bellerophon slay.

Hesiod, Theogony 319

The dreaded Chimaera took up residence in a place called Lycia and caused great havoc, killing and terrorizing all the neighboring area. So naturally, King Iobates sought for some hero to destroy it. At that time there arrived at his court a gallant young warrior, whose name was Bellerophon. He brought letters from Proetus, the son-in-law of Iobates, recommending Bellerophon in the warmest terms as an unconquerable hero, but added at the close a request to his father-in-law to put him to death. The reason was that Proetus was jealous of him, suspecting that his wife Antea looked with too much admiration on the young warrior. From this instance of Bellerophon being unconsciously the bearer of his own death-warrant..
Iobates, on perusing the letters, was puzzled what to do, not willing to violate the claims of hospitality, yet wishing to oblige his son-in-law. A lucky thought occurred to him, to send Bellerophon to combat with the Chimaera. Bellerophon accepted the proposal, but before proceeding to the combat consulted the soothsayer Polyidus, who advised him to procure if possible the horse Pegasus for the conflict. For this purpose he directed him to pass the night in the temple of Minerva. He did so, and as he slept Minerva came to him and gave him a golden bridle. When he awoke the bridle remained in his hand. Minerva also showed him Pegasus drinking at the well of Pirene, and at sight of the bridle, the winged steed came willingly and suffered himself to be taken. Bellerophon mounting, rose with him into the air, and soon found the Chimaera.
Flying above the Chimaera on Pegasus, Bellerophon rained down arrows on the creature, with little effect - the breath of the Chimera was so hot that it melted the hero's arrowheads. The beast was too strong and threatened to overwhelm him with its flaming breath. Bellerophon then attached a lump of lead to the point of his spear and thrust it between the Chimaera's jaws. The creature's fiery breath melted the lead, which trickled down its throat, burning its insides -- instantly killing her.

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Cerberus

Cerberus was a three-headed hound (although the poet Hesiod says he had 50) with snaky extremities and a snake for a tail. Cerberus was said to be the offspring of two monsters, Typhon (fire breathing serpent) and Echidna (commonly portrayed as an odd and unsettling juxtaposition of beautiful woman and deadly serpent also mother of the Sphinx and other motley assortment of monsters).
Cerberus was the watchdog of the Greek underworld and faithful servant to Hades. He was charged with the job of devouring anyone trying to return to the land of the living and refused entrance to living humans.
Like the Gorgons, Cerberus was so dreadful to behold that anyone that looked upon him was turned to stone. He was the brother to the Hydra and the Chimera.

Cerberus is featured in several mythological stories in his role as the watchdog of Hades. One of the well known stories involves the Thracian singer, Orpheus, who was much revered in ancient Greece. He was happily married to the nymph, Eurydice. One day she died of a snake bite. Orpheus was so grief stricken by this sudden loss that he no longer sang or played. He decided to risk his own life in a desperate journey to the land of the dead in the forlorn hope of bringing Eurydice home.
By using his miraculous music, Orpheus was able to charm the boatman Charon, who ferried him across the Styx. Even though Cerberus was diligent in his job of security, he abandoned his watchdog task and lay down meekly to the strains of Orpheus's lyre after which Orpheus was able to gain passage. Which emphasizes Orpheus's magical gifts of enchantment (indeed, Cerberus was notorious for not allowing mortals who were still alive to enter the Underworld, with the exception of a handful of mythological characters).
Hades and his wife Persephone, granted Orpheus his only desire on one condition: under no circumstances was Orpheus to look back at Eurydice until both of them were completely returned to the land of the living. But so overcome was the singer by the love for his departed wife that just before they reached the surface, he could not resist a quick glance in the half-light. The result was that Eurydice turned into a ghost again and sank back to Hades' kingdom forever. Orpheus' own fate was to be dismembered by Thracian maenads, the female worshipers of Dionysus.

Perhaps the best known mythological stories involves Hercules. One of Hercules' 12 labors was to fetch Cerberus from the underworld. A challenge the god of the dead, Hades, allowed him to undertake, but only on the condition that he was unarmed.
The first barrier to the soul's journey beyond the grave was the most famous river of the Underworld, the Styx. Here the newly dead congregated as insubstantial shades, mere wraiths of their former selves, awaiting passage in the ferryboat of Charon the Boatman. Charon wouldn't take anyone across unless they met two conditions. Firstly, they had to pay a bribe in the form of a coin under the corpse's tongue. And secondly, they had to be dead. Heracles met neither condition, a circumstance which aggravated Charon's natural grouchiness. But Heracles simply glowered so fiercely that Charon meekly conveyed him across the Styx. The greater challenge was Cerberus, who had razor teeth, three (or maybe fifty) heads, a venomous snake for a tail and another swarm of snakes growing out of his back. These lashed at Heracles while Cerberus lunged for a purchase on his throat. Fortunately, the hero was wearing his trusty lion's skin, which was impenetrable by anything short of a thunderbolt from Zeus. Heracles eventually choked Cerberus into submission and dragged him to Tiryns, where he received due credit for this final Labor. After succeeding, Hercules returned the creature to Hades.

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Black Beast of Exmoor

Sightings of the animal go back to the early 1970s when people in Devonshire reported it. In 1983, the feline was killing livestock and frightening people. Over 100 farm animals Eric Ley owned in South Molten were killed.
The London Daily Express offered a reward for the killing or capture of the beast. Marine riflemen were sent to the area to try to kill the animal to stop the slaughter of livestock. The attacks stopped while they there. Some of the soldiers saw the beast, but none was able to shoot it. After the troops left, the attacks started again.
Most of those who saw the beast said it looked like a black panther. Others said it looked like a puma. Some said they saw two cats, a panther and a puma, roaming the fields together.
Trevor Beer, a naturalist claimed to have had an encounter with the beast in 1984. It walked out of the brush and stared at him, then it turned and dashed back into the woods.
In 1988, a farmer saw a huge black feline running at an incredible speed. In December 1991, a farm family watched a large feline that looked like a panther as it stalked the land near their house. A few weeks later, the son saw the animal climb a tree.
The Beast of Exmoor has been photographed. Some of the pictures clearly show a black panther. It is not possible to identify the animal in others.
It is possible that some of those who saw the beast misidentified it. Perhaps it was a large dog or a feral cat whose size people misjudged.
The beast could have been a former pet set free or an escapee from a home, zoo or circus. There were no big cats reported as escaped when the Beast of Exmoor roamed.
Di Francis theorized that the big cats have secretly lived in Great Britain since the prehistoric era, but this has been rejected by zoologists.
Another possibility is that big cats who were set free have bred and they and their descendents live in Britain.

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Phoenix

"A mythical bird that never dies, the phoenix flies far ahead to the front, always scanning the landscape and distant space. It represents our capacity for vision, for collecting sensory information about our environment and the events unfolding within it. The phoenix, with its great beauty, creates intense excitement and deathless inspiration.

- The Feng Shui Handbook, feng shui Master Lam Kam Chuen

Ancient Phoenix of Egypt (Benu, Bennu)

The ancient Egyptians linked the myth of the phoenix with the longings for immortality that were so strong in their civilization, and from there its symbolism spread around the Mediterranean world of late antiquity. The Bennu bird was usually depicted as a heron. Archaeologists have found the remains of a much larger heron that lived in the Persian Gulf area 5,000 years ago. The Egyptians may have seen this large bird only as an extremely rare visitor or possibly heard tales of it from travelers who had trading expeditions to the Arabian Seas.
It had a two long feathers on the crest of it's head and was often crowned with the Atef crown of Osiris (the White Crown with two ostrich plumes on either side) or with the disk of the sun.
The Bennu was the sacred bird of Heliopolis. Bennu probably derives from the word weben, meaning "rise" or "shine." The Bennu was associated with the sun and represented the ba or soul of the sun god, Re. In the Late Period, the hieroglyph of the bird was used to represent this deity directly. As a symbol of the rising and setting sun, the Benu was also the lord of the royal jubilee.
This Egyptian phoenix was also associated with the inundation of the Nile and of the creation. Standing alone on isolated rocks of islands of high ground during the floods the heron represented the first life to appear on the primeval mound which rose from the watery chaos at the first creation. This mound was called the ben-ben. It was the Bennu bird's cry at the creation of the world that marked the beginning of time. The bennu thus was the got of time and its divisions -- hours, day, night, weeks and years.
The Bennu was considered a manifestation of the resurrected Osiris and the bird was often shown perched in his sacred willow tree.
At the close of the first century Clement of Rome became the first Christian to interpret the myth of the phoenix as an allegory of the resurrection and of life after death. The phoenix was also compared to undying Rome, and it appears on the coinage of the late Roman Empire as a symbol of the Eternal City.

Classical Arabian Phoenix

Perhaps the most well known, the Arabian phoenix was a fabulous mythical bird, said to be as large as an eagle, with brilliant scarlet and gold plumage and a melodious cry. Making it's home near a cool well, the Phoenix would appear at dawn every morning to sing a song so enchanting that even the great sun god Apollo would stop to listen.
It was said that only one phoenix existed at any one time, and it is very long-lived with a life span of 500 years, 540 years, 1000 years, 1461 years or even 12,994 years (according to various accounts). As the end of its life approached, the phoenix would build a pyre nest of aromatic branches and spices such as myrrh, sets it on fire, and is consumed in the flames. After three days the birth -- or as some legends say a rebirth -- the phoenix arises from the ashes. According to some sources, the phoenix arose from the midst of the flames.
The young phoenix gathers the ashes of its predecessor into an egg of myrrh and takes it to Heliopolis, the city of the sun, to deposit it on the alter of the sun god.
A symbolic representation of the Death and rebirth of the sun. It is also described as being either eagle like or heron like. It lives on dew, killing nothing and crushing nothing that it touches. Generally considered the king of birds. It has alternatively been called the bird of the sun, of Assyria, of Arabia, of the Ganges, the long-lived bird and the Egyptian bird. The earliest reference to the Phoenix was made by Hesiod in the 8th century B.C., but the most detailed account is by Herodotus of Halicarnassus, the famous Greek historian in 5th century B.C.

Chinese Phoenix (Feng Huang)

In Chinese mythology, the phoenix is the symbol of high virtue and grace, of power and prosperity. It represents the union of yin and yang. It was thought to be a gentle creature, alighting so gently that it crushed nothing, and eating only dewdrops.
It symbolized the Empress usually in a pairing with a dragon (the dragon representing the Emperor), and only Empress could wear the phoenix symbol. The phoenix represented power sent from the heavens to the Empress.
If a phoenix was used to decorate a house it symbolized that loyalty and honesty was in the people that lived there. Jewelry with the phoenix design showed that the wearer was a person of high moral values, and so the phoenix could only be worn by people of great importance. The Chinese phoenix was thought to have the beak of a cock, the face of a swallow, the neck of a snake, the breast of a goose, the back of a tortoise, hindquarters of a stag and the tail of a fish.
A common depiction of the Feng Huang was of it attacking snakes with its talons and its wings spread. In fact images of the phoenix have appeared throughout China for well over 7000 years. Often in jade and originally on good-luck totems. Although during the Han period (2200 years ago) the phoenix was used as a symbol depicting the direction south shown as a male and female phoenix facing each other. It carried two scrolls in its bill, and its song included the five whole notes of the Chinese scale (I don't exactly know how it could sing with its mouth full). Its feathers were of the five fundamental colors: black, white, red, green, and yellow and was said to represent the Confucian virtues of loyalty, honesty, decorum and justice. Depictions of the phoenix were placed on tomes and graves.

Japanese Phoenix (Hou-Ou/Ho-Oo)

The Ho-Oo is the Japanese phoenix, the Ho being the male bird and the Oo being the female. Introduced to Japan in the Asuka period (mid 6th to mid 7th century AD) The Hou-Ou greatly resembles the Chinese Phoenix the Feng-Huang in looks.
The Ho-Oo is often depicted as nesting in a paulownia tree and was thought to only appear at the birth of a virtuous ruler and was said to mark a new era by decending from the heavens to do good deeds for people only to return to its celestial abode to await a new era. In other traditions, the Hou-ou apears only in peaceful and prosperous times -- which are rare indeed.
The Ho-Oo has been adopted as a symbol of the royal family, particularly the empress. It is supposed to represent the sun, justice, fidelity and obedience. It was used in a wide veriety of items including mirrors, lacquerware, textiles and chests.

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Great Circle

Great circles are straight lines that go all the way around the center of the earth. The equator is a great circle. Meridians of longitude that cross over the north and south poles are also great circles. For every location on a great circle, it's antipodal location is also on the circle. Other than the equator itself, any great circle crosses the equator at two antipodal locations, 180° apart. Other than the equator and meridians of longitude that run due north and south, any great circle reaches it's maximum latitudes at two locations that are 90° of longitude east and west of the two locations where the great circle crosses the equator.

Easter Island, Nazca, Ollantaytambo, Paratoari, Tassili n'Ajjer and Giza are all aligned on a single great circle. Additional ancient sites that are located within one tenth of one degree of this great circle include Petra; Perseopolis; Khajuraho; Pyay, Sukothai and Anatom Island.

Near Ollantaytambo, Machupicchu and Cuzco are within one quarter of a degree. The Oracle at Siwa in the western Egyptian desert is within one quarter of a degree. In the Indus Valley, Mohenjo Daro and Ganweriwala are within one quarter of a degree. The ancient Sumerian city of Ur and Angkor temples in Cambodia and Thailand are within one degree of the great circle. The Angkor temple at Preah Vihear is within one quarter of a degree.

This circle crosses over the source and the mouth of the Amazon, the dividing line between upper and lower Egypt, the mouth of the Tigris-Euphrates, the Indus River and the Bay of Bengal near the mouth of the Ganges. The circle also crosses over a number of areas of the world that are largely unexplored, including the Sahara Desert, the Brazilian Rainforest, the highlands of New Guinea, and underwater areas of the North Atlantic Ocean, the South Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea.


The alignment of these sites is easily observable on a globe of the earth with a horizon ring. Aligning any two of these sites on the horizon ring will align all of these sites on the ring. 3-D world atlas software programs will also draw this great circle around the earth. The four images below are centered on the two locations where the great circle crosses the equator and the two locations where the great circle reaches it's maximum latitudes. The circle crosses over the equator at 48° 36' west longitude and 131° 24' east longitude. The maximum latitude of the circle is 30° 22' north latitude at 41° 24' east longitude and 30° 22' south latitude at 138° 36' west longitude.

All great circles have two antipodal axis points. The two axis points for the equator are the north and south poles. Every point along the equator is equally distant at 90°, or one quarter of the circumference of the earth, from the north and south poles. For any great circle, the distance from the axis points to any point along the circle is one quarter of the circumference of the earth. For any great circle other than the equator, the longitude of the axis points are 90° east and west of the two points where the great circle crosses the equator.

Great circles that run due north-south along meridians of longitude have their axis points on the equator, 90° of longitude east and west of the points where the meridian circle crosses the equator and 90° of latitude from the poles where meridian circles reach their maximum latitudes. The distance from the axis points to any point along a meridian circle is one quarter of the circumference of the earth, but 90° of longitude from the axis point to the point where the meridian circle crosses the equator is 6,225 miles, while 90° of latitude from the axis point to the maximum latitude of the meridian circle at the poles is 6,215 miles. This is because the polar circumference of the earth is 24,860 miles, while the equatorial circumference is 24,901 miles, due to the bulge of the earth at the equator and the flattening of the earth at the poles.

Our modern system of calculating degrees of latitude from the equator to the poles is based on the north-south angular change along the surface of the earth. As a result, degrees of latitude are slightly longer at the poles, where the earth is flatter, and slightly shorter at the bulge of the equator. For great circles other than the equator and other than meridian circles, the north-south distance from the axis points to the great circle crosses over the pole in one direction, while it crosses over the equator in the other direction. As a result, the latitude of the axis points must be adjusted slightly to compensate for the longer distance of degrees of latitude at the poles and the shorter distance of degrees of latitude at the equator.

The two axis points for the great circle illustrated above are located at 59° 53' north latitude and 138° 36' west longitude and at 59° 53' south latitude and 41° 24' east longitude. The southern axis point is in deep water approximately 500 miles from the coast of Antarctica. The northern axis point is in the northwestern corner of Canadian British Columbia on a glaciated ridge line approximately 6,500 feet above sea level. The circumference of this great circle is 24,892 miles. This is slightly less than the equatorial circumference of the earth, but closer to the equatorial than the polar circumference because the maximum latitude of the great circle is closer to the equator than the poles, and because most of the shortening of the polar circumference is due to the flattening of the earth near the poles.

The chart below lists the distance of each site from the great circle and the distance of each site from the northern axis point. There are slight variations in the distance from the axis point to the great circle depending on whether the route from the axis point to different locations along the great circle crosses over the equator or polar regions. The mean distance from the axis point to the great circle is 6,218 miles.

The sites listed above are shown clockwise from Giza on the equal azimuthal projection below. The projection is centered on the axis point in southeastern Alaska. Distances to any location from the center of an equal azimuthal projection are equally scaled. Since all of the sites on the great circle alignment are equally distant from the axis point at one quarter of the circumference of the earth, the alignment forms a perfect circle halfway between the center and the outer edge of the projection.

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Does Earth's magnetic field leaking?

Scientists have found two large leaks in Earth's magnetosphere, the region around our planet that shields us from severe solar storms. The leaks are defying many of scientists' previous ideas on how the interaction between Earth's magnetosphere and solar wind occurs: The leaks are in an unexpected location, let in solar particles in faster than expected and the whole interaction works in a manner that is completely the opposite of what scientists had thought.

The findings have implications for how solar storms affect the our planet. Serious storms, which involved charged particles spewing from the sun, can disable satellites and even disrupt power grids on Earth.

The new observations "overturn the way that we understand how the sun's magnetic field interacts with the Earth's magnetic field," said David Sibeck of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., during a press conference today at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

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The face on Mars

You're looking at a partial high-resolution image of the notorious Face on Mars, universally "debunked" by mainstream media outlets due in no small part to the baseless pronouncements of a single pseudoscientific pundit.

I suspect many readers will agree that the highlighted feature at least resembles a humanoid eye, down to the well-defined elliptical structure surrounding the central protruding "pupil." But how do we go about testing the notion that the Face on Mars boasts an anatomically accurate "eye"? After all, aren't we merely seeing what we want to see?

In this case, no.

Long before the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft returned provocative images of the Cydonia Mensae region of Mars, the presence of secondary facial characteristics had been predicted by proponents of what became known as the Artificiality Hypothesis.

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Flower of Life

The "Flower of Life" can be found in all major religions of the world.
It contains the patterns of creation as they emerged from the "Great Void". Everything is made from the Creator's thought.
After the creation of the Seed of Life the same vortex's motion was continued, creating the next structure known as the Egg of Life.
This structure forms the basis for music, as the distances between the spheres is identical to the distances between the tones and the half tones in music. It is also identical to the cellular structure of the third embryonic division (The first cell divides into two cells, then to four cells then to eight). Thus this same structure as it is further developed, creates the human body and all of the energy systems including the ones used to create the Merkaba. If we continue creating more and more spheres we will end up with the structure called the Flower of Life.The flower of life holds a secret symbol created by drawing 13 circles out of the Flower of Life. By doing this, one can discover the most important and sacred pattern in the universe. This is the source of all that exists; it's called the Fruit of Life. It contains 13 informational systems. Each one explains another aspect of reality. Thus these systems are able to give us access to everything ranging from the human body to the galaxies. In the first system, for example, it's possible to create any molecular structure and any living cellular structure that exists in the universe. In short every living creature.

The most common form of the "Flower of Life" is hexagonal pattern (where the center of each circle is on the circumference of six surrounding circles of the same diameter), made up of 19 complete circles and 36 partial circular arcs, enclosed by a large circle.

The "Seed of Life" is formed from seven circles being placed with sixfold symmetry, forming a pattern of circles and lenses, which acts as a basic component of the Flower of Life's design.

The Temple of Osiris at Abydos, Egypt contains the oldest to date example. it is carved in granite and may possibly represent the Eye of Ra a symbol of the authority of the pharaoh. Other examples can be found in Phoenician, Assyrian, Indian, Asian, Middle Eastern, and medieval art.

* Leonardo da Vinci has studied the Flower of Life's form and its mathematical properties. He has drawn the Flower of Life itself, as well as components therein, such as the Seed of Life. He has drawn geometric figures representing shapes such as the platonic solids, a sphere, a torus, etc., and has also used the golden ratio of phi in his artwork; all of which may be derived from the Flower of Life design. *
Where Math, Geometry and Spirituality meets
The flower of life shape contains a secret shape known as the fruit of life that consists of 13 spheres that hold many mathematical and geometrical laws. These laws represent the whole universe. Giving the flower of life to someone is like giving them the whole universe in one jewel.

The Flower of Life can be found in all major religions of the world. In Egypt, the source of all the monotheistic religions, the "Flower of Life", can be found in the ancient Temple of Abydos. In Israel, it can be found in ancient synagogues in the Galilee and in Mesada.

People reported physical and psychological changes after wearing this pendant - faster heart beats, prophetic dreams, breaking of illusions, seeing the reality as it is and becoming free from long time fears.

The flower of life is one of the strongest sacred geometric shapes!
The whole universe in one jewel! The Flower of life pendant is excellent for healing and helps in connecting to the higher self.

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Giant Scorpion

On 20.11.2007 scientists who discovered the fossil claw of a giant sea scorpion in southern Germany say the find -- the biggest of its kind -- suggests similar ancient creatures were much larger than previously thought.
German palaeontologist Markus Poschmann excavated the fossilized claw of the giant aquatic creature from 390 million-year-old rocks near the town of Prüm in Rhineland Palatinate, the online journal Biology Letters reported on Tuesday, Nov. 20.
The 46-centimeter (18-inch) claw probably came from an animal around 2.5 meters (eight feet, two inches) in length -- half a meter longer than any previously found.
"This is an amazing discovery," said Simon Braddy from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol in England, in a press release.
Braddy, along with Poschmann from the General Department of Cultural Heritage in Rhineland-Palatinate and Erik Tetlie from Yale University, co-authored the report.
Scientists surprised at size of find

"We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies, but we never realized, until now, just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were," Braddy added.
Poschmann described finding the claw in an area that probably had once been an ancient estuary or swamp.
"I was loosening pieces of rock with a hammer and chisel when I suddenly realized there was a dark patch of organic matter on a freshly removed slab. After some cleaning I could identify this as a small part of a large claw," Poschmann said.
"Although I didn't know if it was complete or not, I decided to try and get it out. The pieces had to be cleaned separately, dried, and then glued back together. It was then put into a white plaster jacket to stabilize it," he said.

Theories vary on reason for monstrous size

The article said the discovery of the 390-million-year-old giant fossil claw proved that arthropods (spiders, insects and crabs with segmented bodies, jointed limbs and a hard external skeleton) were much larger in the past than previously thought.
Biologists delving into the earth's distant past are divided as to how some arthropods were able to develop to such monstrous sizes. Some suggest that they benefited from an oxygen-rich atmosphere, while others argue that they had to get bigger in order to keep up with the supersizing of their likely prey, the early armored fish.
"There is no simple single explanation," Braddy said.
"It is more likely that some ancient arthropods were big because there was little competition from the vertebrates, as we see today. If the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere suddenly increased, it doesn't mean all the bugs would get bigger."

Species only found in present-day Germany

Despite their name, sea scorpions -- known as eurypterids -- were not true scorpions. Equipped with long, flat, jointed carapaces, they stalked warm shallow sea waters from around 500 million to 250 million years ago, eventually moving into fresh water.
Eurypterids are believed to be the extinct aquatic ancestors of today's scorpions and possibly all arachnids, a class of joint-legged, invertebrate animals, including spiders, scorpions, mites and ticks.
Braddy said the fossil was from a Jaekelopterus Rhenaniae, a kind of scorpion that lived only in Germany for about 10 million years, about 400 million years ago.

Had Death Ray devastated Tunguska?

The mechanism behind Tesla's death ray is not well understood. It was apparently some sort of particle accelerator. Tesla said it was an outgrowth of his magnifying transformer, which focused its energy output into a thin beam so concentrated it would not scatter, even over huge distances. He promoted the device as a purely defensive weapon, intended to knock down incoming attacks - making the death ray the great-great grandfather of the Strategic Defense Initiative.

It is not certain if Tesla ever used the death ray, or indeed if he even succeeded in building one. But the following is the often-related story of what happened one night in 1908 when Tesla tested the foreboding weapon.

At the time, Robert Peary was making his second attempt to reach the North Pole. Cryptically, Tesla had notified the expedition that he would be trying to contact them somehow. They were to report to him the details of anything unusual they might witness on the open tundra. On the evening of June 30, accompanied by his associate George Scherff atop Wardenclyffe tower, Tesla aimed his death ray across the Atlantic towards the arctic, to a spot which he calculated was west of the Peary expedition.

Tesla switched on the device. At first, it was hard to tell if it was even working. Its extremity emitted a dim light that was barely visible. Then an owl flew from its perch on the tower's pinnacle, soaring into the path of the beam. The bird disintegrated instantly.

That concluded the test. Tesla watched the newspapers and sent telegrams to Peary in hopes of confirming the death ray's effectiveness. Nothing turned up. Tesla was ready to admit failure when news came of a strange event in Siberia.

On June 30, a massive explosion had devastated Tunguska, a remote area in the Siberian wilderness. Five hundred thousand square acres of land had been instantly destroyed. Equivalent to ten to fifteen megatons of TNT, the Tunguska incident is the most powerful explosion to have occurred in human history -- not even subsequent thermonuclear detonations have surpassed it. The explosion was audible from 620 miles away. Scientists believe it was caused by either a meteorite or a fragment of a comet, although no obvious impact site or mineral remnants of such an object were ever found.

Nikola Tesla had a different explanation. It was plain that his death ray had overshot its intended target and destroyed Tunguska. He was thankful beyond measure that the explosion had - miraculously - killed no one. Tesla dismantled the death ray at once, deeming it too dangerous to remain in existence.

Posted by Alan Taylor on September 02, 1998

I'm open to the suggestion that the Tunguska blast was caused by Tesla misfiring his death ray, but there's one small problem with the theory.
If the blast was 15 megatons, where did he get the energy?

Thermodynamics tells us that you won't get more energy out than you put in... and you have to burn a lot of coal to get 15 megatons worth of energy out of the generators common in Tesla's time. IF Tesla caused the Tunguska Blast, THEN one of these three hypotheses must be true:
The fundamental laws of Termodynamics are wrong, or at least flawed.
Tesla burned a hell of a lot of coal and stored the energy through some capacitative effect in his Wydencliffe apparatus, possibly over days or weeks.
Tesla's device does not actually cause the explosion, but artificially catalyzes another (even higher-energy) phenomenon. There is simple precedent for this hypothesis - just think of how much energy a gallon of gasoline releases when you apply a simple spark.

Let's ignore (1) for the moment because refuting thermodynamics is a much larger issue than proving that Tesla built a working 'death ray'.

(2) could potentially be proven through historic records, if anyone can find out how much fuel was delivered to Wydencliffe in 1908. I'd wager that all the fuel ever burned at the facility would not generate 15 megatons-equivalent of electrical
energy, even with a very efficient power plant.

That leaves (3). Any takers?

Other notes: I read somewhere that the Wydencliffe facility was NOT dismantled after the 1908 experiments, but rather that it was signed over to a hotel in NYC to settly for Tesla's unpaid bills. It was dynamited almost a decade later to recover
the scrap metal costs. The important 'black boxes' may already have been removed, but it is possible that Tesla did not 'immediately dismantle' Wydencliffe, as is claimed in this article. Again, this is something that could be supported by research into the public records for the state of New York.

Finally, Tesla was also researching broadcast power, using the earth itself as a transmission system. Is it possible that his 'death ray' was not a particle-beam style device, but a kind of capacitor that could selectively and explosively discharge on the earth's surface? It wouldn't explain anything, but it would be important for
anyone seeking to duplicate the experiment to know in what direction Tesla had been heading when he allegedly blew up Tunguska...

Comments are welcomed and desired. I have only a layman's interest in the subject, so bear with me, please.

Posted by Phil Nadeau on February 24, 1999

I have been dabbling in Tesla coils for a while and also reading about Nikola Tesla. He was a man without equal. Reading about his earthquake machine, it seems to me that he had found a way to get around common phyics, power in = power out. With his machine, he could move buildings over 1/4 mile away using a small air compressor and a piston in a cylinder through resonance. Why could'nt he apply these same ideas to his 'Death Ray',which would focus all the energy from his Wardenclyffe facility at one point, picking up energy from the earth along the way.
My question is: How could you aim such a device? Comments?

In a cursory surf of the web, I've not found primary eyewitness accounts of Tesla's Wardenclyffe test, nor secondary news accounts of the day; tertiary sources abound, but only the message I reply to here and a Parascope's Tesla page provide even a qualitative idea of the time, given in both as "the evening of June 30". (The two accounts, in fact, appear to be identical.)

Published reports give 7:17 am, June 30, 1908, local Tunguska time (00:17 GMT) for the event. This is consistent with seismic records of the event, in which the GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) for the earliest seismic arrival at the Irkutsk observatory is given as 00:18.8. (Irkutsk is on the SW shore of Lake Baikal at about 52.25 deg N, 104.3 deg E [Richter, Elementary Seismology, p 707], about 1100 km SSE of the Tunguska site at 61 deg N, 101.3 deg E. [Richter, p 157].)

Now, Tesla's Long Island facility is -5 hours from GMT, or 12 hours earlier than Tunguska time. In other words, the Tunguska event occured at about 7:17 pm, June 29, Long Island time, about one day before the time given in web accounts of Tesla's Wardenclyffe experiment.

So, if the qualitative web accounts of Tesla's experiment are trustworthy, Tesla had nothing to do with Tunguska. If anybody can provide eyewitness accounts of Tesla's activities, this could be nailed down, one way or another.

Follow up from Joe Wilson:
The Parascope account is sensationalized to say the least. Their use of the date "June 30th" is not arrived at by any documented evidence. The credible evidence suggests that Tesla was periodically conducting high-power experiments at Wardenclyffe during mid 1908, but "nailing it down" precisely is presently very difficult, because Teslas notes from the period are lost!!
Oliver Nichelson first proposed a Tesla/Tunguska link based on compelling circumstantial evidence. This evidence is not adequately reflected in any of the tabloid-style fictionalized accounts, that get quoted and re-quoted. People don't like scientific arguments based on circumstantial evidence, so they sometimes lie to fill gaps in their knowledge.
The true evidence is of a subtler form, residing in the nature of the Tunguska Blast & Wardenclyffe, and Tesla's demonstrated interest in the journeys of Peary.
Writings which make extravagant claims about non-existent first-hand accounts only serve to arouse the skepticism of otherwise open-minded people. There may in fact be as much circumstantial evidence for a Tesla/Tunguska link, as there is for many widely accepted scientific theories. Some people would just dismiss the idea out of hand, but you can't please everyone.

Ask the FBI what they know about the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo Cult and their interest in Tesla. http://www.fbi.gov/foipa/hisfigs.htm#tesla

I strongly believe that these nutters have re-discovered Tesla's weapons of distruction. Such a test might have taken place on 28 May 1993 close to the Banjawarn sheep station - NW of Perth, Australia. The event registered 3.7 on the Richter scale and was assumed to have been the first ever recorded quake in that part of Australia.

Initially the tremor was assumed to be the result of a meteorite impact (such as Tunguska). After gathering detailed data and speaking to the locals evidence suggested a man-made event.

Eyewitnesses reported sighting a fireball trailing across the sky just minutes before the subsequent tremor. This was followed by a bright blue flash and shortly afterwards, by an earth tremor measuring 3.7 on the Richter scale.

Shortly following this a "large hemisphere of orange light, lined with a silverish glow, rose above the apparent blast site." Extraordinarily, the dome of light remained in place for two hours, and then rapidly vanished like "someone turning off a switch.

I personally believe that this was probably the first time since 1908, that the full power of Tesla's death ray had been unleashed.

The Aum cult are also thought to have re-created Tesla's eathquake machine. The cult's leader so accurately predicted the Kobe disaster 8 days before the event. Kobe was automatically assumed to be a terrible natural disaster but I bet Aum could tell you otherwise.

Tesla weapons of this distructive power make nukes look like pellet guns. If such technology is in the hands of these maniacs then the world has something really to worry about.

Look out New York & Washington !!!

source

Death Ray

Also called the "Peace Ray" and "teleforce," the account refers to Tesla's macroscopic particle beam projector, first mentioned publicly in the New York Sun, July 10, 1934 [Tesla Said, p.108]. The device, which was based upon a large Van de Graaff generator of unique design and a special type of open ended vacuum tube, comprised a system for the acceleration of very small charged metallic particles to prodigiously high velocity—about 48 times the speed of sound—according to Tesla. The particles were projected out of the tube by means of electro-static repulsion. As can be seen from Tesla's words written in a letter to J.P. Morgan, Jr. on November 29, 1934 it was intended for use in national defense.

"I have made recent discoveries of inestimable value which are referred in the marked passage of the clipping enclosed... [possibly "Dr. Tesla Visions the End of Aircraft In War," Syracuse Herald, October 21, 1934] The flying machine has completely demoralized the world, so much that in some cities, as London and Paris, people are in mortal fear from aerial bombing. The new means I have perfected afford absolute protection against this and other forms of attack."

The tube was designed to project a single row of highly charged particles. According to Tesla there would be no dispersion whatever, even at great distance. Since the cross section of the carriers might be reduced to almost microscopic dimensions, an immense concentration of energy, practically irrespective of distance, could be attained.

In 1934 Tesla spoke with an S. M. Kintner of the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company regarding further development of the particle-beam device. There are two letters dated April 5, 1934 and April 7, 1934 that refer to these discussions.

A fairly detailed description of Tesla's particle-beam projector is presented in the book Nikola Tesla's Teleforce & Telegeodynamics Proposals. A number of teleforce-related newspaper articles appear in the book Solutions to Tesla's Secrets.