Category: Science

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Part 4 – Geologists Run X-Ray Diffractometer on Corguinho, Brazil Stones

“You have presented us with objects that are well outside the things we have encountered before, outside our experience.”

- Art Johnson, Ph.D., Prof. of Geology, Univ. of Pennsylvania

 

Left: The two halves of Stone 2 split by analytical chemist, Phyllis Budinger, for infrared study and EDS plots. Right: Stone 1 in profile to show disk-shape. Stone 1 is 16mm in diameter and weighs 3.2051 grams. Stone 2 before being broken in two was also 16mm in diameter and weighed 3.3068 grams. Both Stone 1 and Stone 2 were collected by Brazilian businessman, Felipe Branco, on September 15, 2002, after a “rain of rocks” on the Urandir Oliveira farm in Corguinho, Brazil. Photograph © 2003 by Linda Moulton Howe.
Left: The two halves of Stone 2 split by analytical chemist, Phyllis Budinger, for infrared study and EDS plots. Right: Stone 1 in profile to show disk-shape. Stone 1 is 16mm in diameter and weighs 3.2051 grams. Stone 2 before being broken in two was also 16mm in diameter and weighed 3.3068 grams. Both Stone 1 and Stone 2 were collected by Brazilian businessman, Felipe Branco, on September 15, 2002, after a “rain of rocks” on the Urandir Oliveira farm in Corguinho, Brazil. Photograph © 2003 by Linda Moulton Howe.
Melted rock sample from shallow crater on Corguinho, Brazil, hilltop discovered in October 2000, by local residents who saw a light come down out of the sky toward the hill and rise up again. Photograph © 2003 by Linda Moulton Howe.
Melted rock sample from shallow crater on Corguinho, Brazil, hilltop discovered in October 2000, by local residents who saw a light come down out of the sky toward the hill and rise up again. Photograph © 2003 by Linda Moulton Howe.

June 6, 2003  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Biophysicists W. C. Levengood's observations about the titanium and magnetic quality of the Corguinho, Brazil stones were reinforced by the x-ray diffractometry (XRD) work done May 22-23 at the University of Pennsylvania. Prof. Johnson, whose field is soil analysis, had selected nine objects from my rock trays and collection bags. I also gave him two halves of Stone 2 that Phyllis Budinger had split open. During the first XRD run, he was joined by Prof. Gomaa Omar, an eminent rock expert, and another geologist who specializes in rare earth isotopes. First up was one half of Stone 2, which they called the “button” on the XRD analysis shown below.

Second was a piece of the melted rock that local Corguinho eyewitnesses found in October 2000 after a light came down to the top of a hill and took off again. That rock was arbitrarily labeled “lightening strike” because Dr. Omar said very high temperature had to have been involved.

 

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Mars Express Radar Will “See” 3 Miles Into Red Planet’s Crust

Artist's concept of Mars Express courtesy ESA and J-L Atteleyn.
Artist's concept of Mars Express courtesy ESA and J-L Atteleyn.


June 2, 2003  Baikonur, Kazakhstan - Today the European Space Agency (ESA) launched its first mission to Mars called "Mars Express" aboard a Russian rocket from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Attached to the orbiter was Britain's Beagle 2 lander which will land on the surface and look specifically for signs of Martian life. The "robotic geologist" will dig into Mars soil and sample the atmosphere hunting for organic material or methane gas produced by living organisms.

 

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Hubble Telescope Finds “Ashes” of First Stars in This Universe

Artist's interpretation of a primordial quasar lighting up surrounding gases about  900 million years after the Big Bang. Source: European Space Agency and Wolfram Freudling, Space Telescope-European Coordinating Facility/European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany.
Artist's interpretation of a primordial quasar lighting up surrounding gases about  900 million years after the Big Bang. Source: European Space Agency and Wolfram Freudling, Space Telescope-European Coordinating Facility/European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany.


May 14, 2003  Garching, Germany - The Hubble Space Telescope-European Coordinating Facility and European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany, near Munich, announced in April 2003 that Hubble has discovered what might be the "ashes" from the first stars in this universe. The powerful telescope found significant iron in the light from primordial quasars only 900 million years old. The theory is that the iron is the residue, the ashes, of first generation stars that formed perhaps as early as 200 million years after the Big Bang and then died in supernova explosions that produced all the iron later recycled into the quasars. According to Wolfram Freudling who led the Hubble research, 200 million years for first star births is much earlier than previously thought.

 

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SARS Breakthrough – Genetic Sequencing of Coronavirus Linked to Killer Pneumonia

Health officials in China are seeing the SARS virus infect people of all ages, and kill even the young and healthy. Photograph © 2003 by Associated Press.
Health officials in China are seeing the SARS virus infect people of all ages, and kill even the young and healthy. Photograph © 2003 by Associated Press.

April 14, 2003  Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada - Today, the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are reporting that the number of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome cases, known as SARS pneumonia, have risen around the world to 3169 and 144 deaths. This is an epidemic. Many doctors are wondering if it will become a global pandemic that can infect hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of people over the next several months.

 

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