The Maya prediction.
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The Maya Calendar
Calendar Description and Coordination
a).- An astronomical calendar which initiates on the date the Sun passes perpendicularly through the zenith, a day between the 24 - 26 of July each year. Its calculated to be 365.2420 days long and was used to fix the position of the solstices, the equinoxes, the synodic revolutions of the planets in our solar system, the eclipse nodes and other celestial phenomena. This calendar must have been the base of reference used by the Maya astronomer - priests for their astronomical calculations which were made with a minimum of 4 decimals. Examples of this can be found in the codices.
b).- The civil calendar or Haab of 365 days is often referred to as the Vague Year. It is composed of 18 months of 20 days and one month 5 days long called uayeb. The difference of one fourth of a day in regard to the astronomical calendar makes a periodical correction necessary through methods foreseen by the Maya. Within this calendar runs the Tun year 360 days long which was used for calendric calculations.
c).-The Tzolkin, Mayan name that means "the distribution of the days", was a ceremony performed on the astronomical new year. In this ceremony the astronomer - priests indicated the days in which the agricultural labor and religious ceremonies were to take place within a 260 day cycle. The Tzolkin is also the name used to designate the most important calendar of the Maya which has also been called the sacred almanac or the Sacred Round. It is a combination of a cycle of 13 day numbers with a cycle of 20 day names (the Kin). In every 365 day Haab year there always runs a 260 day Tzolkin calendar.
The Maya usually described a date by specifying its position in both the Tzolkin and the Haab calendars, this alignment of the Sacred Round and the Vague Year generates the joint cycle called the Calendar Round.
The Components
1).- The Kin
The Maya year has a basic unit called Kin, a word that means day, Sun, etc. The Tzolkin calendar has a cycle of 20 day names conbined with a cycle of 13 day numbers. Each of these 20 names has a glyph to represent it, these are:
2).- The Uinal
The Maya year is divided in 19 months, they are designated Uinal, each has a name and a corresponding glyph. Of these months, the first eighteen have twenty days and the last one, called Uayeb, has only five. The days within a month are numbered from 0 to 19 with the exception of Uayeb which is numbered from 0 to 4.
3).-The Numbers
To write their dates the Maya used both the glyph corresponding to the different time periods and a number for each of them. The Maya developed a unique mathematical system that uses dots for units and bars for five units. The numbers can be written vertically or horizontally. They discovered and used the zero as well as a vigesimal positioning system, similar to the decimal positioning system used today.
Previous Ages
The concept of 'suns' or 'sun ages' was recognized throughout Mesoamerica by various peoples, as well as by people in many other parts of the world. These are meant to represent various creations of the world, or recreations after a cataclysmic destruction. In Mesoamerica four ages were recognized by all except by the Toltecs and the Aztecs, who claimed that the world had been recreated five times. Both of these people held their own invasion of the Valley of Mexico as the last creation of the world.
The creations and recreations can be pinpointed, but the series of dates runs into conflict with various concept of what constituted a new age.
The Olmec and Maya Long Count calendar starts the "current creation" in 3114 BC. This date does not count the two destructions of the Earth since that time, but only recognizes that condition on Earth and in the skies were completely different before and after 3114 BC. Thus only two ages are recognized.
Book 10 of the Maya "Chilam Balam" books places creations or recreations after floods, and thus recognizes three eras, the periods before and after 3114 BC, and the period after 2349 BC, this last is known as the "third reign." But the dark skies after 1492 or 1440 BC are also dealt with as the start of a new creation. It is not surprising that this confusion exists, since Book 10 of the "Chilam Balam" is obviously derived from diverse sources.
The concept of 'four ages' is a satifying shorthand if we associate a change of the length of the year with each of the ages, and especially if these events can be associated with some worldwide catastrophe. But it does not work out that way. What can be gathered from the most reliable source, the "Chilam Balam," is the following..
There was a very earlier age, suggested in the "Popol Vu" and detailed in Book 11 of the "Chilam Balam" -- the long period before Saturn went nova in 4200 BC and before humans were created. The "first creation" is in ca 4200 BC, and the first age which should be counted is the period including this, starting in 8200 BC and ending in the "second creation" of 3114 BC.
The 'second creation' is 3114 BC. References to it are only implied in the text of the "Chilam Balam" from the fact that the "third creation" happened later, in 2349 BC. The second age is thus the era after 3114 BC.
The 'third creation' is the event we know as the 'flood of Noah.' Book 10 of the "Chilam Balam," however, places the 'third creation' (incorrectly) in Katun 9-Ahau ending in 2266 BC, but should properly be placed in Katun 4-Ahau ending in 2345 BC.
The fall of the Absu, the 'third creation,' is noted as "the second baptism" with the implication that the first is the flood of 3114 BC. The reading of the "Chilam Balam" also implies the start of a new calendar. In this it parallels the Chinese "Annals of Shu," as well as the Babylonian "Enuma Elish," and, of course the Bible's flood of Noah.
Despite the fact that Jupiter flares up and looses its coma to all but disappear from the skies in about 2200 BC, Jupiter remains the God in power as ruler. Thus the change in the Earth's orbit in 2193 BC is not an event which defines a new era. The "third creation" continued.
The close call of Venus in 1492 BC starts yet another age, the fourth. In fact the "Chilam Balam" notes that Venus "rubbed the Earth" in Katun 9-Ahau ending in 1486.2 BC (corrected). A new creation is also to be inferred from the mention of the establishment of the trees of the four cardinal directions. This is the third reference in the document to these trees, noted previously after 3114 BC and ca 2349 BC. There is also a reference to "walking in darkness," which can be identified as the 40 years or so after the visit by Venus in 1492 BC. The Israelites also "walked in darkness."
"Then they perceived that the world was being created. Then creation dawned upon the world."
The reference to creation is suggested for 1492 BC by its placement in the texts, but could also refer to the 200 year climatic turndown experienced worldwide after 2193 BC.
There are no further ages referenced. The year 747 BC, which occluded the Sun for two days and change the orbit of the Earth, had no bearing on the list of ages. The Earth shock of 786 BC could have represented the start of yet another age, but the "Chilam Balam" specifically states that this was not to happen. Similarly, the nova event of 685 BC is mentioned but not counted as a new era.
I suspect that the "Chilam Balam" was transcribed from books indigenous to the Peten and Yucatan Maya. The story of these books may have differed from the records kept among the Olmecs of Veracruz and in the Valley of Mexico, which have not survived.
But we can count four ages from Olmec sources under a completely different paradigm: the site alignments used in the Olmec coastal area since 1440 BC, and in the Valley of Mexico since about 600 BC.
These horizon alignments for sunrise or sunset reference dates involve four dates. First, from about 400 BC, and at some locations since before 685 BC, the setting of the culmination of the Pleiades is used to signal the event of 2349 BC.
This is followed, starting at San Lorenzo and followed by almost every later site, the date of April 19, 1492 BC in recalled in the alignment of the setting Sun to some mountain or volcano.
At La Venta we first see alignments to February 28, 747 BC, and various dates centering on July 685 BC, including July 25 and the calendaric equivalent date of August 12. These alignments show up at all later sites. The alignments are discussed in Appendix H.
As can be seen there are four important dates, although the first is what is everywhere known as the "third creation."
When did the Long Count Start?
Logically, the first date in the Long Count should be 0.0.0.0.0, but as the baktun (the first component) are numbered from 1 to 13 rather than 0 to 12, this first date is actually written 13.0.0.0.0.
The authorities disagree on what 13.0.0.0.0 corresponds to in our calendar. I have come across three possible equivalences:
13.0.0.0.0 = 8 Sep 3114 BC (Julian) = 13 Aug 3114 BC (Gregorian)
13.0.0.0.0 = 6 Sep 3114 BC (Julian) = 11 Aug 3114 BC (Gregorian)
13.0.0.0.0 = 11 Nov 3374 BC (Julian) = 15 Oct 3374 BC (Gregorian)
Assuming one of the first two equivalences, the Long Count will again reach 13.0.0.0.0 on 21 or 23 December AD 2012 – a not too distant future.
The date 13.0.0.0.0 may have been the Mayas’ idea of the date of the creation of the world.
Predictions.
In the past the Maya predicted the coming of coming of the spaniards.
The key seemed to lie in the mysterious prophecy that the priests had made concerning the return of the god Quetzalcoatl in the year 1 Reed (1518).
The god was associated with Venus and he was said to be a bearded, white man who had come to ancient Mexico bringing the gift of civilization. That may sound like a colorful myth to us but it had the potency of the apocalypse to the Aztecs when they learned that a strange vessel had arrived on the shores of the Yucatan. The warrior-emperor Montezuma was plunged into spiritual confusion and political paralysis.
The mystical side of this fascinating history never quite made sense to me. However, the strange fact is the Aztecs could have easily crushed the conquistadors if it were not for this prophecy.
2012.
So what is supposed to happen on this magical date of December 21, 2012?
One theory suggests that a Magnetic Field shift will occur around this time, that the calendar was based on pole shifts, which have occurred repetitively throughout the Earths history. The Maya, understanding the time periods between these shifts created their Long count calendar around them and come up with the final date for the next pole shift. But how would they know what to look for to expect another shift? How much time was supposed to pass between these shifts and how did they know it? Was there record passed down to them from long ago recounting a time when there was a prior pole shift so that mathematics could be used to predict the next one to come? Or did the ancients study a form of dendrochronology the study of climate changes by looking at tree rings.
Facts.
According to paleomagnetists, the Earth periodically -- every few hundred thousand years -- flips its magnetic field (i.e. the north and south magnetic poles are reversed). Evidence for this peculiar habit is provided by measurements of the orientation of magnetic materials in sedimentary and volcanic rocks, and the fact that such orientations have been grouped into distinct periods over the last 178 million years. Based on this evidence, the most recent magnetic pole reversal appears to have occurred some 730,000 years ago, leaving the north and south magnetic poles at 75 degrees North, 102 degrees West, and 67 degrees South and 140 degrees East, respectively. Work by Allan Cox [1] has shown extreme variability in when and where such an event occurs – ranging from a 35 million year hiatus in the Cretaceous Period, to more recent variations of several hundred thousand years between events. Of course, this means that based on the relatively recent past, we're way overdue!
The next peak in sunspot activity is expected in 2012. That date alone is enough to cause some consternation, in that according to some sources the Mayan Calendar ends, and the world will never be quite the same. Meanwhile the Jupiter-Sun oppositions are continuing on an approximate 13 month basis to rotate around the Zodiac. Then on December 2, 2012 , the opposition occurs with the Sun in Sagittarius and Jupiter in Gemini. The respective declinations are within one degree of being in exact opposition. The curious part is that the planets, Pluto, Mars, and Venus form with Jupiter something called the “Finger of Destiny” with Jupiter as the focal point.
Alexander Fefelov, a senior spokesman for the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, said that planet Earth would have its magnetic and geographic poles relocated during the upcoming years.
“Planet Earth on the orbit is a round object in weightlessness. The planet may suddenly change its axial inclination from time to time. It happens once in 23,000 years. The pole displacement angle may reach 30 degrees. The South Pole used to be located in the area of Easter Island before the latest displacement, whereas the North Pole was located in the Himalayas. That is why mammoths, rhinoceroses and saber-toothed tigers used to inhabit Arctic latitudes. It was a very sudden displacement of poles. Archeologists still uncover animals with indigested herbal food in their stomachs, which means that the animals died as a result of fast freezing, so to speak,” the scientist said.
We know that the magnetic pole has been shifting steadely and Nasa warns for solar storms in 2012 who could disrupt the power grid for a very long time ( years ) so i guess we better prepare for the worst and hope for the best !
We came across an Aztec calculator you can type in any date and you can see how it would be depicted in their signs just go to : azteccalendar
Nasa on 2012.
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The Nuremberg wood carving (1)
At sunrise on the 14th April 1561, the citizens of Nuremberg beheld "A very frightful spectacle." The sky appeared to fill with cylindrical objects from which red, black, orange and blue white disks and globes emerged. Crosses and tubes resembling cannon barrels also appeared whereupon the objects promptly "began to fight one another." This event is depicted in a famous 16th century woodcut by Hans Glaser.
At dawn of April 4, in the sky of Nuremberg (Germany), a lot of men and women saw a very alarming spectacle where various objects were involved, including balls "approximately 3 in the length, from time to time, four in a square, much remained insulated, and between these balls, one saw a number of crosses with the color of blood. Then one saw two large pipes, in which small and large pipes, were 3 balls, also four or more. All these elements started to fight one against the other." (Gazette of the town of Nuremberg).
The events lasted one hour and had such repercussions that an artist, Hans Glaser, drew a woodcut of it at the time. It describes two immense black cylinders launching many blue and black spheres, blood red crosses, and flying discs. They seem to fight a battle in the sky, it also seems that some of these spheres and objects have crashed outside the city.
( 2 ) This picture shows a UFO sighting over Hamburg, Germany
The objects were described as 'two glowing wheels' -
November 4, 1697 - Wheels - Spoked Wheels.
A similar reporting occurred just five years later in Basle Switzerland. On August 7, 1566, at dawn, many citizens of Basle (Switzerland), frightened, saw during several hours the black spheres involved in a formidable aerial battle, invading the sky of their city: The city's gazette recorded:
At the time when the sun rose, one saw many large black balls which moved at high speed in the air towards the sun, then made half-turns, banging one against the others as if they were fighting a battle out a combat, a great number of them became red and igneous, thereafter they were consumed and died out.
This is a tapestry called Summer's Triumph It was created in Bruges in 1538 and presently resides at the Bayerisches National Museum. You can clearly see several disc shaped objects in the top of the tapestry.
This Illustration depicts a sighting by two Dutch ships in the North Sea of an object moving slowly in the sky. It appeared to be made by two disks of different size. The source for this account is one of the books entitled Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Admiral Blaeu. These books were compilations of articles by different authors and consisted of detailed accounts of long engagements at sea, cartography information.
A disk shaped object is shining beams of light down on John the Baptist and Jesus - Fitzwilliam Musuem, Cambridge, England - Painted in 1710 by Flemish artist Aert De Gelder. It depicts a classic, hovering, silvery, saucer shaped UFO shining beams of light down on John the Baptist and Jesus. We could think it's the artist his artistic liberty at work but where did he get his inspirattion from ?
A 17th century fresco of the crucifiction - Svetishoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta, Georgia.
Note the two saucer shaped craft on either side of Christ.
Frescos throughout Europe which reveal the appearance of space ships in the skies including this painting of 'The Crucifixion' - painted in 1350. It seems to depict a small human looking man looking over his shoulder - at another UFO as if in pursuit - as he flies across the sky in what is clearly a space ship. The leading craft is decorated with two twinkling stars, one reminiscent of national insignia on modern aircraft. This paintng hangs above the altar at the Visoki Decani Monestary in Kosovo, Yugoslavia.
This painting above was done by Carlo Crivelli (1430-1495) and is called "The Annunciation with Saint Emidius" (1486) and hangs in the National Gallery, London. A disk shaped object is shining a pencil beam of light down into Mary's crown chakra. A blow up of the object is next to the painting.
This painting shows a huge dome-shaped craft hovering above the Tomb of Jesus where Mary Magdalene came to visit His Tomb where an Angel also appeared.
This strange coin dates from 1680 France. The Latin words translate = "It's here at an oportune time". Is it a flying saucer ? It looks like one. Sceptics claim it's a mushroom. Is it possible this coin, the size of a quarter, was used to commemorate Ezekiel's story in the Bible ? How does the inscription blend in with the Biblical story ?
Louis XIV reigned during this time frame. (1643-1715).
A fourteenth century painting of the Madonna and Child depict on the top right side the image of a UFO hovering in the distance. A blow up of this fresco reveals tremendous details about this UFO including port holes. It seems to indicate a religious involvement between UFO's and the appearance of the Christ Child.
This painting is called "The Madonna with Saint Giovannino". It was painted in the 15th century by Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494) and hangs as part of the Loeser collection in the Palazzo Vecchio. Above Mary's right shoulder is a disk shaped object. Below is a blow up of this section and a man and his dog can clearly be seen looking up at the object.
Painted by Paolo Uccello - circa 1460-1465.
The picture on the right shows a red saucer shaped UFO seen near Jesus.
The painting hangs in the Academy of Florence.
This was painted around 1490 by an unknown painter .
Saucer shaped "clouds" intrigue modern ufologists. Could so many have appeared in the sky at one time? Or, are the hat shaped clouds the "divine Inspiration" of the artist ?
Experts say that all these "ufo's ' are caused by the guidelines installed by the Roman Catholic Church to artists at the time , i wonder why these objects appear also in Orthodox catholic fresco's and other art (Native American , Australian Aboriginal , India , japan etc...)
Let each reader make up his own mind .
We have put a few more here.
How about the last one ?
It's an illustration From the book "Gulliver's Travels" dated 1803 .
Source : bibleufo
Ancient paintings & UFO's.
Crop Circles .
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Crop Circles
Crop circles are patterns created by the flattening of crops such as wheat, barley, rapeseed (also called "canola"), rye, corn, linseed and soy.
The term was first used by researcher Colin Andrews to describe simple circles he was researching. Although, since 1990, the circles have evolved into complex geometries, the term circle has stuck.
Many circles are known to be man-made,such as those created by Doug Bower, Dave Chorley, and John Lundberg. Bower and Chorley were awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in 1992 for their crop circle hoaxing.
Various hypotheses have been offered to explain the formation of crop circles of unknown origin, ranging from the naturalistic to the paranormal. The main naturalistic explanation is that all crop circles are man-made, primarily as a hoax. Paranormal explanations suggest that, while some crop circles are man-made, others are the product of alien spacecraft or supernatural processes.
The earliest recorded image resembling a crop circle is depicted in a 17th-century English woodcut called the "Mowing-Devil". The image depicts the devil with a scythe mowing (cutting) a circular design in a field of oats. The pamphlet containing the image states that the farmer, disgusted at the wage his mower was demanding for his work, insisted that he would rather have "the devil himself" perform the task. That night, the crop appeared as if it were on fire, then in the morning a circular pattern had mysteriously appeared
A more recent historical report of crop circles was republished (from Nature, volume 22, pp. 290–291, 29 July 1880) in the January 2000 issue of the Journal of Meteorology.It describes the 1880 investigations by amateur scientist John Rand Capron:
"The storms about this part of Western Surrey have been lately local and violent, and the effects produced in some instances curious. Visiting a neighbour's farm on Wednesday evening (21st), we found a field of standing wheat considerably knocked about, not as an entirety, but in patches forming, as viewed from a distance, circular spots....I could not trace locally any circumstances accounting for the peculiar forms of the patches in the field, nor indicating whether it was wind or rain, or both combined, which had caused them, beyond the general evidence everywhere of heavy rainfall. They were suggestive to me of some cyclonic wind action,..."
In 1966, one of the most famous accounts of UFO traces happened in the small town of Tully, Queensland, Australia. A sugarcane farmer said he witnessed a saucer-shaped craft rise 30 or 40 feet (12 m) up from a swamp and then fly away, and when he went to investigate the location where he thought the saucer had landed, he found the reeds intricately weaved in a clockwise fashion on top of the water.[citation needed] The woven reeds could hold the weight of 10 men.
There are also many other anecdotal accounts of crop circles in Ufology literature that predate the modern crop circle phenomena, though some cases involve crops which were cut or burnt, rather than flattened.
Crop circles shot into prominence in the late 1970s as many circles began appearing throughout the English countryside. The phenomenon of crop circles became widely known in the late 1980s, after the media started to report crop circles in Hampshire and Wiltshire and corresponding phenomena were reported from locations as diverse as Penrith in Australia and Minnesota in the United States. To date, approximately 12,000 crop circles have been discovered in sites across the world, from locations such as the former Soviet Union, the UK and Japan, as well as the U.S. and Canada. Skeptics note a correlation between crop circles, recent media coverage, and the absence of fencing and/or anti-trespassing legislation. However, proponents point to the simple profusion of these events prior to and continuing after the decline in media coverage as rendering the amateur crank phenomenon unlikely.
Although farmers have expressed concern at the damage caused to their crops, local response to the appearance of crop circles can often be enthusiastic, with locals taking advantage of the tourist potential of circles. Past responses have included bus or helicopter tours of circle sites, walking tours, t-shirts and book sales. Potential markets include curious tourists, scientists, crop circle researchers, and individuals seeking a spiritual experience by praying to and communing with spirits.Notably also, the crop generally continues to ripen in a 'genuine' circle, being laid flat rather than broken. Some researchers have found that the corn appears to have bent at the nodes of the stalks, showing that can only be replicated in the lab using a microwave oven. In rarer cases, this has occurred near the top of the stems, not the bottom, all but ruling out human involvement .
In 1996, a circle appeared near Stonehenge, and the farmer set up a booth and charged a fee. He collected £30,000 in four weeks. The value of the crop had it been harvested was probably about £150.
Early examples of crop circles were usually simple circular patterns of various sizes. After some years, more complex geometric patterns emerged. In addition to circle designs based on sacred geometry, some of the later formations, those occurring after 2000, are based on other principles, including fractals. Many crop circles now have fine intricate detail, regular symmetry and careful composition, and elements of three-dimensionality have been introduced.
Crop circle maker John Lundberg, in an interview with Mark Pilkington, spoke about this change in crop circle designs: "I am rather envious of circlemakers in other countries. Expectations about the size and complexity of formations that appear in the UK are now very high, whereas the rather shabby looking Russian formation made the national news. Even Vasily Belchenko, deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, was on site gushing about its origin: 'There is no doubt that it was not man made... an unknown object definitely landed there.' If the same formation appeared in the UK it would undoubtedly be virtually ignored by researchers and the media alike."
In 2002, Discovery Channel commissioned five aeronautics and astronautics students from MIT to create crop circles of their own. Discovery's production team consulted with crop-circle researcher Nancy Talbott, who provided them with three attributes that she believed set "real" crop circles apart from known man-made circles, such as those created by Doug Bower and Dave Chorley. These criteria were:
Elongated apical plant stem nodes
Expulsion cavities in the plant stems
The presence of 10–50 micrometre diameter magnetized iron spheres in the soils, distributed linearly
Over the course of a single night, the team was able to create a stereotypical "man-made" circle that they then attempted to enhance using the three criteria. The team used lengths of rope to plot their design and trampled the wheat down in a spiral pattern using lengths of wooden board attached to loops of rope. To meet criterion 2, they constructed a portable microwave emitter, using it to superheat the moisture inside the corn stalks until it burst out as steam. To meet criterion 3, they built a device—dubbed the Flammschmeisser ("flamethrower")—that sprayed iron particles through a heated ring. However, the device proved to be too time-consuming to use, and they were forced to finish the task by using a pyrotechnic charge to distribute the iron around the circle. The circle was later analyzed by graduate students from MIT, who declared it to be "on a par with any of the documented cases". Their conclusion was later questioned by Talbott, who noted that the team had only been able to recreate two of the three criteria. Talbott also expressed concerns that the iron particles were not distributed laterally. Furthermore, she felt that the team's use of night-vision headsets and other technologically advanced items would be out of reach for the average hoaxer. This would have been even more so in the '70s and '80s when night-vision equipment was rare outside official use.
The creation of the circle was recorded and used in the Discovery Channel documentary Crop Circles: Mysteries in the Fields.
What are the unique characteristics of a genuine crop circle ?
1. Enlarged (both laterally and longitudinally) plant stem nodes -- Node elongation (stretching) was a permanent effect related to the formation energies, and this is the parameter now used.
2. Marked bending of the plant stem nodes which occurs at the 1st node and 2nd nodes beneath the seed-head, or even the 3rd and/or 4th nodes down the plant stem.
3. Expulsion cavities -- holes blown out at the plant stem nodes -- usually found in the 2nd node beneath the seed-head.
4. Stunted, malformed seeds and germination effects. There are four basic changes to the seeds and germination capability in crop circle plants documented so far. These radically different reproductive effects depend upon the species of crop involved, the growth phase of the plants at the time the crop circle occurs, and the composition and intensity level of the energy system involved (which appears to differ from event to event):
a. Plant will continue to develop normally but seed development ceases when the circle is formed prior to development of the seed in the plant.
b. Seeds will be visually smaller, will weigh less and will exhibit repressed germination when the crop circles occur at a slightly later growth stage
c. Seeds will be visually stunted and will weigh less than normal when crop circles occur in more mature plants, where the embryo is fully formed or nearly so.
d. Seeds exhibit a massive increase in growth rate when crop circles occur in mature plants with fully formed seeds. These seedlings can tolerate extreme stress (lack of water and/or light) for considerable periods of time without apparent harm.
5. Tiny spheres of unusually pure iron are regularly found in soils from crop circle sites. These may be clusters of very small, perfectly spherical, magnetic particles.
OTHER OBSERVATIONS
A wide variety of crops, vegetation, soil, and snow are mediums where formations appear.
A coating of black sooty-like dust is found on some stems and leaves in formations.
Increase in crystallinity
Light Phenomena are commonly observed, photographed or videotaped in and around fields where crop circles historically appear. These range generally from golf ball to soccer ball in size.
Equipment Failure of cameras, recording devices, cell phones and even tractors regularly fail to operate in or near some crop circles, particularly when they are new. In some cases compasses will spin wildly or be seen to deviate 10-20º from North. And every year photographers flying over formations experience unexplained malfunctions of their cameras, in some cases finding them to be damaged beyond repair. Also, witnesses in homes near crop circles often report TV, cell phone, smoke alarm and security device interference or malfunction during the nights when a nearby crop was formed.
Animal & Human Reactions -- in proximity to some crop circles are common. Flights of geese have been observed to break formation directly over crop circles, reforming their "V" pattern once past the formation, and deer have been watched circumventing crop circles which were placed so as to cross habitual game trails across fields.
(greater ordering of the crystal structure) in clay minerals is found at some crop circle sites that is normally found only in sedimentary rock which has been exposed -- for hundreds, if not thousands, of years -- to both heat from the earth's core and the massive pressure of tons of ooverlying rock.
So we know that quite often modern day crop circles are man made , that doesn't explain the crop circles who appeared in the "old days" .
As they say " a picture is worth a thousand words " so check out the last pic we put here ( LOL)!
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Ice Circles in Lake Baikal
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station noticed two mysterious dark circles in the ice of Russia’s Lake Baikal in April. Though the cause is more likely aqueous than alien, some aspects of the odd blemishes defy explanation.
The two circles are the focal points for ice break-up and may be caused by upwelling of warmer water in the lake. The dark color of the circles is due to thinning of the ice, which usually hangs around into June.
Upwelling wouldn’t be strange in some relatively shallow areas of the lake where hydrothermal activity has been detected, such as where the circle near the center of the lake is located.
Circles have been seen in that area before in 1985 and 1994, though they weren’t nearly as pronounced. But the location of the circle near the southern tip of the lake (pictured above) where water is relatively deep and cold is puzzling.
But experts say they can explain the mystery, and it's not aliens — methane gas rising from the lake floor represents the likely culprit.
Methane emissions can create a rising mass of warm water that begins swirling in a circular pattern because of the Coriolis force, or the phenomenon caused by the Earth's rotation that also helps create cyclones.
"Once the water mass reaches the underside of the ice on the surface of the lake, the warm water melts the ice in a ring shape," said Marianne Moore, a marine ecologist at Wellesley College in Massachusetts who has spent much time studying Lake Baikal with Russian researchers. The lake is the largest (by volume) and deepest (5370 feet at its deepest point) fresh water lake on Earth as well as one of the oldest at around 25 million years.
The latest ring patterns included a circle of thin ice with a diameter of 2.7 miles (4.4 km), although the circular patch was becoming a hole of open water. Astronauts spotted similar ice circles in both 1985 and 1994, and satellites have also made sightings over the past years.
This phenomenon is nothing new to the Russian government, which has documented circle sightings on an official Ministry of Natural Resources Web site.
"Interestingly, the government is also warning people that abnormally high emissions of methane may occur in these areas in the summer and fall, posing risks for ships," Moore told LiveScience.
The Russian Ministry of Natural Resources points out that random emissions of natural gas have probably always occurred in Lake Baikal. And such emissions would have created ice rings every few years.
"But, because of the huge size, it is practically impossible to see a ring standing on the ice or even from a mountain," the Ministry Web site notes. The Russian government has ordered daily space monitoring of the Lake Baikal area in recent years, which prompted many of the satellite sightings.
Tectonic activity deep in the Earth may be the trigger for such methane gas release, according to the Russian government.
That could have major consequences for Lake Baikal's rich array of plants and animals, Moore cautioned — especially in combination with a warming climate. Both could lead to spring ice disappearing more rapidly from Lake Baikal, which can typically hold onto an ice cover through June.
"Unlike other lakes in the world, spring ice is essential for the reproduction of the lake's top predator (the Baikal seal) and the dominant plants (under-ice phytoplankton) at the bottom of the food web," Moore said. "Without spring ice, the food web of this lake will be disrupted substantially."
Methane gas, abundantly trapped as a half frozen slush in the northern hemisphere's tundra permafrost regions and at the bottom of the sea may well be a ticking time bomb, says geologist John Atcheson in an article published by the Baltimore Sun in December last year. Methane is about twenty times stronger as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Since arctic warming seems to procede faster than expected, there is a real danger that deposits of methane and similar gases trapped in normally frozen ground, may thaw out and "belch" into the atmosphere, wreaking havoc with our computer simulations of global warming.
According to Gregory Ryskin, associate professor of chemical engineering at Northwestern University, "explosive clouds of methane gas, initially trapped in stagnant bodies of water and suddenly released, could have killed off the majority of marine life and land animals and plants at the end of the Permian era" — long before dinosaurs lived and died. Ruskin believes that methane may have been the driving force in previous catastrophic changes of the earth's climate, where 95 percent of marine species and 70 percent of land species were lost in - geologically speaking - the blink of an eye.
A new report by The Independent says that below the arctic’s icebergs and ice flows are millions of tons of greenhouse gases that are slowly bubbling to the surface as the arctic atmosphere warms, and the ice melts and allows room for it to rise. While this has been a theory for many years now, scientists have now witnessed “methane chimneys” where the permafrost has melted. Since methane is a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, this should cause concern about how quickly the icebergs are melting. Scientists believe that this methane release can be linked with the rapid increase of arctic temperature in the past years, and can even be traced back to historical extinction events.
Methane hydrate is a form of water ice that contains a large amount of methane within its crystal structure, called a clathrate hydrate. According to Kennett's hypothesis, climatic destabilization would cause a sharp increase in atmospheric methane - thereby initiating a feedback cycle of abrupt atmospheric warming. This process may threaten the current climate, according to the researchers. Warmer ocean temperatures from current global climate change are likely to release methane currently trapped in vast hydrate deposits on the continental shelves. However, consumption of methane by microbes in the deep sea prevents methane gas released from hydrates from reaching the ocean surface and affecting the atmosphere.
Bubbles provide a highly efficient mechanism for transporting methane and have been observed rising from many different hydrate deposits around the world. If these bubbles escape singly, most or all of their methane would dissolve into the deep-sea and never reach the atmosphere. If instead, they escape in a dense bubble plume, or in catastrophic blowout plumes, such as the one studied by UCSB researchers, then much of the methane could reach the atmosphere. Blowout seepage could explain how methane from hydrates could reach the atmosphere, abruptly triggering global warming.
Well most of us are trying to fight global warming in one way or another we only wish that governments would finally tell us the whole truth about global warning even if we would stop all carbon emissions tomorrow it would keep warming up for another 200 years !
By then the huge Methane deposits at the ocean floors and in the ice and permafrost will be released in to the atmosphere a gas that's 20 times stronger as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide .
Source : Timestar
Cork Oak Tree
We all know that cork in the botle , but what else do we know about cork ?
The Cork Oak (Quercus suber) is a medium-sized, evergreen oak tree in the section Quercus sect. Cerris. It is native to southwest Europe and northwest Africa.
Natural stands of cork oak can support diverse ecosystems. For example, in parts of northwestern North Africa, some cork oak forests are habitat to the endangered primate Barbary Macaque, Macaca sylvanus, a species whose habitat is fragmented and whose range was prehistorically much wider. The tree has a thick, insulating bark that likely evolved as a protection against forest fires.
The tree forms a thick, rugged and corky bark. Over time this bark can develop considerable thickness and this can be harvested every 9 to 12 years as cork. The harvesting of cork does not harm the tree and a new layer of cork regrows, making it a renewable resource.
Cork Oaks live about 150 to 250 years.
Virgin cork (or 'male' cork) is the first cork cut from generally 25 year old trees. Another 9 to 12 years is required for the second harvest, and a tree can be harvested twelve times in its lifetime. Cork harvesting is done entirely without machinery. The European cork industry produces 340,000 tonnes of cork a year, with a value of €1.5 billion and employing 30,000 people. Wine corks represent 15% of cork usage by weight but 66% of revenues.
Cork harvesting is done entirely without machinery.
It grows to up to 20 m, although it is typically more stunted in its native environment. The leaves are four to seven cm long, weakly lobed or coarsely toothed, dark green above, paler beneath, with the leaf margins often downcurved. The acorns are two to three cm long, in a deep cup fringed with elongated scales.
Production of cork
When a cork oak is about 20 -25 years old then the cork layer is about 5 cm thick ( 2 inch )
Before a cork oak can deliver cork of sufficient quality for the production of corks ,the tree will be probably 40 years old .
Next the bark will be peeled and processed to different applications.
After the peeling it will take about 9 years before the bark is thick enough to harvest again.
Most of the cork is being produced in Portugal and Spain.
Properties .
Because cork contains air it's lighter then water and heat isolating.
Cork is almost impenetrable for air .
Cork is also very elastic.
A cork can be compressed to 35 % of it's original diameter and on top of this cork is anti - static and noise isolating and humidity resistant.
It has a unique set of properties not found in any other naturally existing material. It is lightweight, rot resistant, fire resistant, termite resistant, impermeable to gas and liquid, soft and buoyant.
Other applications of cork are :
- Floor covering ,loved for it's natural look and isolating qualities. ( especially bathrooms )
- Floor tiles .
- Floats for the anglers.
- Message boards .
- Hobby and crafts materials .
- Cork is also used in space technology because of it's fire resisting qualities .
- Cork can also be used for the outer layer of houses .
- Cork is also used in furniture .
- In music instruments .
- And in shoe soles .
processing
Stripping the bark -- A cork oak must be at least 25 years old before its bark can be harvested. Its cork can then be stripped every 8 to 14 years after that for as long as the tree lives. The cork is stripped off during June, July and August using a long-handled hatchet to cut sections out of the bark. These sections are then pried away from the tree. Workers must be careful not to damage the inner layer of the bark, otherwise the bark won't grow back.
Washing the cork -- The cork slabs that are cut away from the tree are boiled and the rough outer layer of the bark is stripped away. Boiling the cork also softens it, making it easier to work with.
Punching Bottle Stoppers -- From the slabs of cork, holes are punched out to make bottle stoppers. This leaves the slabs full of holes. These bottle stoppers are then sorted and shipped to various destinations. The stoppers can at this time be printed or branded with names or logos.
Uses for Scrap Cork -- Once the bottle stoppers have been punched out of the cork slabs, there is some leftover cork scrap. This scrap is ground up, molded into large blocks and baked in ovens to make other cork products, such as cork tile flooring and cork message boards.
Cork has been used as bottle stoppers for more than 400 years. It is possibly the best suited material to use as a bottle stopper because it contains a natural waxy substance, called suberin. This substance makes cork impermeable to liquids and gas, and prevents the cork from rotting.
There's about 2,2 million ha of cork oak forest wich we find in :
Country Proportion Production
Proportion Production Central and South Portugal 30% 51%
30% 51%Algeria 21% 5%
21% 5% Spain 20% 26%
20% 26% Marokko 16% 6%
16% 6% France 5% 3%
5% 3% Italy 4% 7%
4% 7%Tunesia 4% 3%
4% 3% The trees die with temperature lower then - 5 C and need a rainfall of 600 - 800 mm
Source : Wikipedia
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