Nowhere so strange...

[snork]

I think we may be able to cross off ball lightning from the unexplained list too: Ball Lightning Mystery Solved? Electrical Phenomenon Created in Lab.

Not so fast.

But even if, a replacement "mystery" is already there, and personally I find it's one form of existence way cooler than ballroom blitzes.
Who a few years ago would have thought that a websearch for shrimpoluminescence yields results beyond jokes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrimpolum ... minescence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_ ... minescence

One German name for the Alpheidae is Knallkrebs = bang crab.

[Greyth]

What kind of idiotic argument is that? There are people out there that make (unsupported by evidence) claims, and for this reason alone these claims must be true?

Just to show the absurdity of this argument from a different example than Nikola Tesla: there are a bunch of people "out there" who claim that the Holocaust never happened. So, just because someone makes this claim (however unfounded), it automatically becomes true, or even however remotely likely?

It's no more idiotic than unrequited punctuation. I couldn't find anything reputable on the internet, just a couple of links that were amusing. Claims are, however, being made at various levels. There was a TV documentary recently I bothered to watch that made similar assertions (although to be fair a chap called Tsoukalos made an appearance in it and that in itself is usually a bad sign). Archeology has been fairly staid in recent years and is somewhat resistant to change.

Trying to condense what is happening is difficult but here I'll try. The picture of the ancient world at about 5000-10000 years is being slowly overturned. Not, in the main, by direct evidence but by indirect evidence. An instance is that the walls of ancient Babylon were finished in blue ceramic. Fairly recently some bright spark did an analysis of how much cobalt it would take to do the job. I forget the quantity but it was significantly more than a single source of the mineral could reasonably provide (I seem to remember 500 tons but I'm guessing). There is no cobalt (that we know of) near the site where Babylon was situated. It is indicative of a much larger system of commerce and transportation than was previously thought to have possibly existed given rugged terrain and political instability and frequent wars.

Quite apart from the cost of the materials (cobalt wasn't the only resource required but per ton it was the most expensive by far) there was the difficulty of production. The tiles are remarkably uniform (even after thousands of years after falling into ruin) and in order to achieve that the tile must be heated to a precise temperature and held at that temperature for an extended duration (I cannot recall precise temp and duration). So they must have had a reliable method for measuring temperature across several sites as so many tiles could not have been produced in a single kiln. With steel for example it is possible with practice to distuinguish the temperatures for hardening and annealing by eye but with ceramics there is no clear visual indicator nor sudden change of hue when heating.

http://www.livius.org/se-sg/7wonders/se ... of_Babylon

[Commander McLane]

So what's the conclusion? You do agree that I invented Oolite about 2350 years ago?

Or was it the aliens, because Oolite is too complex for 4th century BCE technology? Which would make me a person with first-hand experience with the little green men.

[Greyth]

Clearly Commander McLane Oolite is far too complex for a descendant of primates to have designed so it's gotta be aliens!

[Disembodied]

Trying to condense what is happening is difficult but here I'll try. The picture of the ancient world at about 5000-10000 years is being slowly overturned. Not, in the main, by direct evidence but by indirect evidence. An instance is that the walls of ancient Babylon were finished in blue ceramic. Fairly recently some bright spark did an analysis of how much cobalt it would take to do the job. I forget the quantity but it was significantly more than a single source of the mineral could reasonably provide (I seem to remember 500 tons but I'm guessing). There is no cobalt (that we know of) near the site where Babylon was situated. It is indicative of a much larger system of commerce and transportation than was previously thought to have possibly existed given rugged terrain and political instability and frequent wars.

Quite apart from the cost of the materials (cobalt wasn't the only resource required but per ton it was the most expensive by far) there was the difficulty of production. The tiles are remarkably uniform (even after thousands of years after falling into ruin) and in order to achieve that the tile must be heated to a precise temperature and held at that temperature for an extended duration (I cannot recall precise temp and duration). So they must have had a reliable method for measuring temperature across several sites as so many tiles could not have been produced in a single kiln. With steel for example it is possible with practice to distuinguish the temperatures for hardening and annealing by eye but with ceramics there is no clear visual indicator nor sudden change of hue when heating.

http://www.livius.org/se-sg/7wonders/se ... of_Babylon

These claims, if true, indicate that the ancient world (between 10,000 and 5,000 BCE if you like, although that is all well before the rise of Babylon, best dated to around 1,800 BCE at the earliest) was more developed and interconnected than we might think: in short, that stone-age and bronze-age people were capable of greater sophistication than we usually allow. Which is kind of what I feel I've been saying with regard to the "inexplicable" walls at Machu Picchu, for example: it's amazing what people can achieve with chisels, string, skill and intelligence. Basically, I agree: I think archaeologists have tended to assume that a low level of technology = a low level of sophistication. But the technology levels were indisputably – those ice-cores again – low.

No high-tech ancient civilisations. No need for high-tech ancient civilisations, or "ancient astronauts", either: these kinds of claims, I feel, denigrate the genuine achievements of real human beings using what they had to hand, and what they had between their ears. It's just a (fairly silly) extension of the kind of belief that had the Victorians attributing Stonehenge to the Phoenecians: they couldn't believe that Neolithic peoples in Britain, who didn't even have the decency to have writing or stone buildings or be in any way similar to the Victorians, could construct something so sophisticated. Machu Picchu was built by native peoples living in Peru, using craft, skill and intelligence. No aliens or Atlanteans required.

[Greyth]

Hmm, you are right about the founding date of Babylon and I was grossly wrong. Of what city was I thinking of at that date probably we will never know... possibly Uruk?

You may well be right about the native origin of Machu Picchu, however the mythology of the natives there differs with us both. They attributed it's building and habitation to their gods. They elevated a king to the status of godhood and he decided that he would live atop the mountain like the other gods. In support of that story there are at least two distinct types of masonry techniques employed there. Curiously it is a pervasive myth that the gods lived in a high and inaccessible place and of all such places Machu Picchu fits the bill most closely. It was also a part of their mythology that their gods demanded tribute in gold and that is why they collected it. Then, they say, the gods stopped coming to collect the gold so they stored it. When the storerooms were full they made ornaments out of it.

Atlanteans? Shall we? Betwixt the pillars of Heracules? There is no room for a continent there. But, if we were to scribe an imaginary line and follow it over the top of the globe and around the other side and back to the opposite pillar would we find a place that meets Plato's description? Yes.

[edit]A little more on Sitchen. I've never seen before a specific refutation of Sitchen's claims. It's a pity he's left us. I would have enjoyed his response...
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sitch ... hin_21.htm
[/edit]

[Commander McLane]

A little more on Sitchen. I've never seen before a specific refutation of Sitchen's claims.

I see one every day. You could see it, too, by using the sophisticated technique of "going outside and looking up". There is a distinct lack of a planet Nibiru. And there will be during the whole year 2013, just as is was during the year 2003.

[SandJ]

A little more on Sitchen. I've never seen before a specific refutation of Sitchen's claims.

I see one every day. You could see it, too, by using the sophisticated technique of "going outside and looking up". There is a distinct lack of a planet Nibiru. And there will be during the whole year 2013, just as is was during the year 2003.

When there is a thread calling you a fraud on the David Icke forum, things are bad! Planet X Nibiru Z.Sitchen debunked!

[Disembodied]

A little more on Sitchen. I've never seen before a specific refutation of Sitchen's claims. It's a pity he's left us. I would have enjoyed his response...

There's quite a thorough refutation of Sitchen's stuff here, originally written in 1996. Frankly it's far more time, effort and scientific knowledge than Sitchen's hogepodge of nonsense deserves: it's a bit like using the Hubble Telescope to expose a game of Three-card Monte ...

Sitchen (apparently) left a comment on it in 2009, although what's given on the page purporting to be from him is hardly a convincing defence of his ideas (or even very coherent), and does not begin to deal with the huge linguistic, archaeological, scientific and astronomical holes the article's author points out.

[Gimi]

I kind of like Sitchen's writings, although I haven't read that much. It's entertaining science fiction in a documentary format. All the discussions just adds to the entertainment.

[Gimbal Locke]

There's quite a thorough refutation of Sitchen's stuff here, originally written in 1996. (...) Sitchen (apparently) left a comment on it in 2009, (...)

As I read it, it is Ken Benjamin (whoever that may be) on 2010-09-15 who is quoting Sitchen 2009.

From the different types of line breaks, it seems to me that Ken's comment goes on until "The Deluge: In The 12th Planet and Divine Encounters Zecharia suggested that the biblical Flood was a giant tidal wave caused by the slippage of the ice sheet off Antarctica, causing the abrupt end", after which Rob Hafernik replies.

[Disembodied]

As I read it, it is Ken Benjamin (whoever that may be) on 2010-09-15 who is quoting Sitchen 2009.

From the different types of line breaks, it seems to me that Ken's comment goes on until "The Deluge: In The 12th Planet and Divine Encounters Zecharia suggested that the biblical Flood was a giant tidal wave caused by the slippage of the ice sheet off Antarctica, causing the abrupt end", after which Rob Hafernik replies.

You're right, it's someone quoting Sitchen. Mind you, some of the most coherent comments there seem to be from spambots pimping home loans and custom-written student essays ... We shall pass over the ALL-CAPS chap who seems to think (if that's the right word) that civilisation was started on a Norwegian lorry somewhere. By aliens, of course.

[Greyth]

When there is a thread calling you a fraud on the David Icke forum, things are bad!

It doesn't get worse than that does it! Strangely I seem to be immune to David Icke. I bought a high tech level filtration system at Ascension but must have forgotten to activate the Sitchen switch.

[edit]
But about this Nibiru thing. I did hear an astronomer say that they were looking for a large celestial body high on the ecliptic? Broadly in accordance with what the funny little chap said!
[edit]
And then there's 'gigantic world-wide flood 13,000 (years)' - the continental shelf is thought to have submerged at about that time.
[edit]
Ahh, cheers guys! I'm touched that you dug up so much information on Sitchen. I'll keep an eye on the filtration system and get it serviced at the nearest starbase.
}}}

[Disembodied]

But about this Nibiru thing. I did hear an astronomer say that they were looking for a large celestial body high on the ecliptic? Broadly in accordance with what the funny little chap said!

The "Nibiru" stuff is pure junk, cooked up from Sitchen's deliberate mistranslations and an extremely selective "analysis" of edited highlights of fragmentary ancient myths and a carving or two.

I did find something about some Japanese astronomers speculating on the existence of an outer planet beyond Neptune, though:

An Outer Planet Beyond Pluto and the Origin of the Trans-Neptunian Belt Architecture
The Astronomical Journal, Volume 135, Number 4 – April 2008

Trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) are remnants of a collisionally and dynamically evolved planetesimal disk in the outer solar system. This complex structure, known as the trans-Neptunian belt (or Edgeworth-Kuiper belt), can reveal important clues about disk properties, planet formation, and other evolutionary processes. In contrast to the predictions of accretion theory, TNOs exhibit surprisingly large eccentricities, e, and inclinations, i, which can be grouped into distinct dynamical classes. Several models have addressed the origin and orbital evolution of TNOs, but none has reproduced detailed observations, e.g., all dynamical classes and peculiar objects, or provided insightful predictions. Based on extensive simulations of planetesimal disks with the presence of the four giant planets and massive planetesimals, we propose that the orbital history of an outer planet with tenths of the Earth's mass can explain the trans-Neptunian belt orbital structure. This massive body was likely scattered by one of the giant planets, which then stirred the primordial planetesimal disk to the levels observed at 40-50 AU and truncated it at about 48 AU before planet migration. The outer planet later acquired an inclined stable orbit (≥100 AU; 20-40°) because of a resonant interaction with Neptune (an r:1 or r:2 resonance possibly coupled with the Kozai mechanism), guaranteeing the stability of the trans-Neptunian belt. Our model consistently reproduces the main features of each dynamical class with unprecedented detail; it also satisfies other constraints such as the current small total mass of the trans-Neptunian belt and Neptune's current orbit at 30.1 AU. We also provide observationally testable predictions.

Note though that TNOs are described as having "tenths of the Earth's mass", so they're not exactly big as far as planets go. And a "resonant interaction with Neptune" means orbital resonance, not "collision". And it should be further noted that this is conjectural: nobody's found it yet.

Claims made by authors which then come true (if this is true, and can in any way be battered into something which just about resembles Sitchen's daft claims) should not be mistaken for proof of the author's access to secret knowledge. You have to first consider how many claims the author is making, and how many he's getting wrong. If you spray enough ideas all over the place, and are generous enough in your interpretation of the actual facts, eventually you're bound to score a couple of hits in amongst all the many, many misses.

Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, and Voltaire's Micromegas, both refer to Mars having two moons. Proof that Swift and Voltaire were privy to alien secrets? Or bog-standard coincidence? Even odder is Edgar Allen Poe's Eureka, prefiguring the Big Bang theory ... >X-Files music<

[Commander McLane]

When there is a thread calling you a fraud on the David Icke forum, things are bad!

It doesn't get worse than that does it! Strangely I seem to be immune to David Icke.

Who is this Icke guy? Never heard about him.