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Enormously Strange Truck Convoy Caught on Film

A bizarre convoy of over 100 semi-trucks under police escort was captured on film in Virginia. Observers fail to find the official explanation satisfactory.

Drivers in Virginia bared witness to such a bizarre sight that as one onlooker remarked, “We must be in the Twilight Zone.” A large semi-truck convoy, comprised of more than 120 vehicles had a police escort as they made their way down Interstate 95.

Numerous onlookers took videos of the trucks, which were then posted to the Internet and sparked many conspiracy theories.

LiveLeak picked up one such video, dubbing the footage as “a very strange convoy of trucks.” The woman shooting the video could be heard saying, “On the interstate, numerous state troopers, followed by a line — everything is blocked off — followed by a line of duplicate Conway freight trains.” The woman also noted that other drivers were filming the event as well.

Officially, there was a perfectly charitable explanation for the barrage of semi-trucks flying down Interstate 95. According to the Virginia State Police, the truckers were participating in the “World’s Largest Truck Convoy,” a charity event that donates all funds to the Special Olympics.

A closer examination of event, however, aroused skepticism among many internet observers and commentators. In particular, calculations of the cost of fuel, labor, and work hours lost nearly may not be worth nearly as much as the only $20,000 that was raised. Reddit user Camblor rightly points out:

110 trucks to raise $20,000? That seems ridiculous. The value of the trucks alone would be around (110 x $130k) $14.3 million, and thats before the cost of fuel, maintenance, insurance, drivers, police escorts, the strain on traffic… There’s got to be a better way to raise the coin.

Edit: I’m not suggesting they bought the trucks for this purpose, but that equipment is worth $14.3 million in capital because it can do a certain amount of work resulting in cashflow/dividends. There’s a huge opportunity cost in tying up that equipment. Same goes for the tied-up public infrastructure, police, and other resources. Plus all the other stuff. It’s insane.

Most alternative theories center around the Special Olympics story being used as cover for the the transportation of secret military weapons, Ebola response equipment, or supplies for a secret post apocalyptic bunker. Even if the fundraising story is true, Reddit user ThatBeardedCarGuy believes that the US government was still watching the event closely:

Some food for thought. The Interstate System was designed to transport troops and military supplies across the large distances of the continent in relatively short time. Ike saw Germany’s defense network during his time in Europe during WWII and championed the cause back home.

We began this project in 1956, but only very recently has the original plan been completed. Figure with all the war rhetoric and tensions between countries, there is bound to be a test of our network at some point.

I’ll be interested to see if anything comes of it through official channels. Doubtful, but this convoy was a test of some sort. Charity event or otherwise, powerful people were watching this with an eye on how it could be implemented if all hell broke loose. It would be a waste not to.

[via Reddit]

Algae Virus Infects Humans and Slows Brain

Researchers have found a plant virus in the throats of healthy humans that could alter visual processing and spatial orientation.

Researchers have found an algae virus in the throats of healthy humans that could alter visual processing and spatial orientation.

“This is a striking example showing that the ‘innocuous’ microorganisms we carry can affect behavior and cognition,” said lead investigator Dr. Robert Yolken, a virologist and pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and director of the Stanley Neurovirology Laboratory at Johns Hopkins. “Many physiological differences between person A and person B are encoded in the set of genes each inherits from parents, yet some of these differences are fueled by the various microorganisms we harbor and the way they interact with our genes.”

The team made the finding by accident when analyzing the microbes in the throats of healthy patients for a non-related study; they were shocked to find Acanthocystis turfacea Chlorella virus 1 (ATCV-10), which is known to infect green algae.

The team found 40 of the 92 study participants carried the virus and those that did had a lower level of performance on a set of tasks that measured the speed and accuracy of visual processing. They performed an average of nearly nine points lower on a task in which they were asked to draw a line between sequentially numbered circles than those who did not have the virus.

To further back up their findings the researchers infected a group of mice with the virus and found they had developed similar cognitive deficits.

The virus is believed to cause changes in the hippocampus, the region of the brain responsible for cataloguing short term and long term memories as well as spatial orientation.

[via Business Insider]

Amelia Earhart Mystery Solved? Plane Part ID’d

Researchers hunting for Amelia Earhart’s lost plane believe they have identified a piece of the aircraft for the very first time since her disappearance.

Researchers hunting for Amelia Earhart‘s lost plane believe they have identified a piece of the aircraft for the very first time since her disappearance.

An aluminum fragment discovered on the uninhabited Pacific atoll Nikumaroro in 1991, near where Earhart disappeared on in 1937, has been identified “with a high degree of certainty” as part of Earhart’s Lockheed Electra.

Earhart took off from Miami on June 1, 1937, officially kicking off her second attempt to circumnavigate the world. On July 2, 1937, she took off from Lae, New Guinea, with just 7,000 miles to go, and disappeared.

According to researchers at The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, which is dedicated to locating Earhart’s plane, the fragment is very likely a patch installed as quick fix to replace a custom-made window on her plane.

Nikumaroro has long been suspected as the final resting place of Earhart after a 1937 was discovered to have possibly captured a glimpse of her Electra’s landing gear.

[via Discovery News]

Antares Launch Fails – Explosion 10s After Liftoff

Watch: NASA’s Antares rocket explodes after liftoff.

Happened moments ago. More to come… Live embed below.

UPDATE:

A rocket carrying a private unmanned spacecraft to the International Space Station exploded shortly after launch on Tuesday. The Antares rocket, carrying Orbital Sciences’ Cygnus spacecraft, exploded a few seconds after liftoff Tuesday evening from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia.

NASA’s launch director confirmed that all personnel are accounted for and there were no injuries. The cause of the accident was not immediately available. It came after a “flawless countdown” during which “the team was not tracking any issues,” NASA said on the launch livestream.

The launch was scheduled to take place at 6:22 Eastern time, but “suffered a catastrophic anomaly” a short distance above the platform, then fell and exploded on contact with the ground.

Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

The Most Dangerous Porta-Potty of All Time?

Strap in! This porta-potty is currently hundreds of feet in the air over the new stadium for the Minnesota Vikings.

Strap in! This porta-potty is currently hundreds of feet in the air over the new stadium for the Minnesota Vikings. Construction began in December of 2013 and is scheduled for completion in 2016.

With the stadium costing the team and tax payers an expected $1.024 billion, the construction company clearly doesn’t want bathroom breaks slowing workers down.

Both photos were taken by David Tinjum, of the Mill City Times.

5 Most Horrifying Halloween Murders

Horrifying true Halloween crimes. From a Halloween prank that turned out to be a gruesome murder scene to the infamous Candyman killer…

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Presenting the 5 most horrifying Halloween murders including the Candyman killer and his poisoned Halloween candy Pixy Stix, the Killer Prophet driven insane by LSD, a massive nightclub fire, the Trick or Treat Murder and a terrifying crime scene right out of a haunted house. These aren’t urban legends…

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Dig Deeper
Candyman, The Man Who Killed Halloween: http://bit.ly/1v1g4xZ
Crazed Hippy Killer caused horror with 1970 murder of California doctor: http://nydn.us/10uouX0
Fire in Swedish disco kills 60: http://ind.pn/1nHVqoW
Trick or Treat Murder: http://lat.ms/10uoBls
Liske gets life for deaths of 3: http://bit.ly/1yDyUij

Music: “Night Crawler” by Sound Ideas

Intro: “The Machine Thinks”
by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…

ATLAS Robot Gets Closer to Walking Like a Human

With help from the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC), the ATLAS robot has received programming updates that enable it to walk like a human with more agility and control than ever before.

When Boston Dynamics first revealed their ATLAS robot last year, the bipedal humanoid robot was a clunky, slow moving contraption tethered to a jumble of cords that performed a variety of controlled tasks awkwardly.

Now with help from the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC), the ATLAS robot has received programming updates that enable it to walk like a human with more agility and control than ever before. Even more impressive is the robot’s ability to walk over a pile of jumbled cinder blocks while easily maintaining its balance. Although the ATLAS continues to perform these tasks slowly, its increased coordination and expanded capabilities are important milestones achieved that will only improve with time to include even greater agility and eventually, speed.

Its construction and development funded and overseen by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the ATLAS robot is approximately 6 feet tall and weighs about 330 pounds. The ATLAS is made out of aircraft-grade titanium and aluminum with blue LED lights mounted inside its chest. The humanoid owes its agility and balance to an onboard computer that receives information from a laser rangefinder and stereo cameras that survey and gauge the robot’s immediate surroundings.

[via Gizmodo]

Rosetta Spacecraft Images Reveal Dunes on Comet

The European Space Agency’s Rosetta robotic spacecraft, currently in orbit around the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, recently took several amazing close-up pictures of C-G’s surface.

The appearance of dunes on the comet surprised many observers due to the lack of wind and gravitational influences that typically shape the same features on Earth. As of now researchers can only speculate as to what may be creating the formation. One commenter at the ESA site has a good analysis:

I think I’ve decided they are deposited by the gas plumes from the surrounding cliffs firing across the already Laktritz covered floor of the “crater” Logan. Just as the mounds and dunes near cliff edges are created. No need to find a different “agent”. The gas plumes don’t have to go straight up do they.

I spotted this some time ago at the base of a cliff in the neck area. The demarcation between exposed subsurface and dust blanket, is really sharp. Now we can see why and how. The rubble strewn area to the right of image 4, the surface blanket looks like snow melting, all patchy, where thicker drifts and mounds take longer to melt. These dust mounds must be where all the dust has been “blown” and collected into quiet zones, so these little pockets take longer to be dispersed.

The chimneys I think are the “smoking guns” for the body penetrating impacts we discussed. The molten ice stuff coming out would build a wall as it immediately freezes on reaching the surface. Frozen and semi frozen ice would slowly fall back down. By the time it reaches the surface the comet has rotated so one side of the caldera has a lot more ice deposited on it. The liquid in the caldera will soon level and freeze once the gas pressure is released and the “ice lava” tube becomes blocked. This core and crater floor will have far fewer volatile ices and gases in it making it a lot less active than the surrounding surface, hence the build up of Laktritz. As the higher side of the icy crater rim takes longer to erode we are left with lots of semicircular cliffs beside flat areas.

The overturned cups are more recent eruptions where less of the crater rim has eroded. The huge flat Star Wars Landing Zone near site C. Is perched on top of huge steep cliffs, the wall of frozen ices that built up as the cryovolcano was erupting. Then we see the partially eroded rim as the cliffs round the flat area. The little cup volcanos show that an overhang actually builds up on the taller side of the rim, so this overhang eventually collapses into the crater, hence the pile of rubble only on one side of the crater. Something that is seen in nearly all the craters.

If the refrozen ices form an amorphous solid like glass, as lava does to make basalt on Earth, we get the smooth solid material full of cracks and fissures we s most commonly on the tops of the lobes. A different composition and slower flow rate would give lumpy, rubble “ice lava, (top left Image 2).. Ices with more gases in them would give a more pumice type material when it freezes, full of holes and tunnels, (Philae landing site image). A different composite of more dense volatile ices give a material like “pillow lava”, which can also be seen in image 2 as the flat topped bulges top middle.

How far this analogy can be used in actuality, I have no idea. No one else does either, since no one has seen cryovolcanism up close before, only on flyby pictures from thousands of Kilometres away. The laws of physics don’t change and the behaviour of molten fluids on freezing is a pretty well understood phenomenon. The low gravity is the big difference, though it seems to make little difference on the Moon and Mars.

The Rosetta spacecraft has been creating a detailed map of the comet in preparation to send its Philae lander to the surface. Philae is currently scheduled to detach from Rosetta on 12 November 2014 at 08:35 UTC, with a landing seven hours later.

[via the European Space Agency]

E-bowl-a “Strikes” New York City

A New York City doctor has tested positive for Ebola… officials have retraced his movements via the subway to a Brooklyn bowling alley, The Gutter.

A doctor who returned from treating Ebola patients in Africa to NYC in recent weeks has been hospitalized with a confirmed case of the virus.

Dr. Craig Spencer returned to his home in Harlem from Guinea last Friday, October 17. He had been checking his temperature twice a day, and Thursday, he had a fever of 100.3 degrees. NYC officials said that yesterday he traveled, via the 1 and L subway lines, to Williamsburg to bowl at The Gutter.

Williamsburg’s bowling alleys right now. Top photo: The Gutter. Bottom photo: Brooklyn Bowl. (Photos: @aymanndotcom) pic.twitter.com/MG0gBaKtKm

— ANIMALNewYork (@ANIMALNewYork) October 23, 2014

This morning, the venue posted an update on its Facebook page that the New York Health Department is working to clean and sanitize the venue, and that it expects to reopen sometime today:

We voluntarily decided to close The Gutter yesterday evening as a precautionary measure while we gathered more information. We are working with the NYC Health Department to have the bar cleaned and sanitized under their supervision and expect to be open sometime today after that is completed. Doctors advising the Health Department have told us that our staff and customers were at no risk.

Just how dangerous would “E-bowl-a” be in a bowling alley? The NY Times has produced this helpful explainer, Q. Can You Get Ebola From a Bowling Ball?:

A. Dr. Craig Spencer, the patient with Ebola currently in isolation at Bellevue Hospital Center, went bowling in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn on Wednesday evening. According to city health officials, he had been taking his temperature twice a day since he left Guinea on Oct. 14. His temperature was normal on Wednesday evening, and he did not yet have any other symptoms, such as nausea or diarrhea. Ebola experts say the disease cannot be transmitted before the appearance of symptoms.Although the surface of a shared bowling ball is a likely place to find germs — and some people avoid bowling for this very reason — it is extremely unlikely that Ebola could be passed that way. There is no evidence that it has been passed, as colds or flu sometimes are, by touching surfaces that someone else touched after sneezing into their hand. Ebola is normally passed through contact with blood, vomit or diarrhea.

If someone left blood, vomit or feces on a bowling ball, and the next person to touch it did not even notice, and then put his fingers into his eyes, nose or mouth, it might be possible. But, the Ebola virus does not not normally build up to high levels in saliva or mucus until very late in the disease — several days after the initial fever sets in — and it is unlikely that someone that ill would have just gone bowling. Also, the Ebola virus is fragile and susceptible to drying out. It does not normally survive for more than a few hours on a hard, dry surface.

[via The Guardian & New York Times]

See the Massive Solar Flare + Eclipse Today

On the afternoon of Oct. 23, 2014, the Moon will pass in front of the Sun. A giant sunspot spitting powerful x-rays will make the eclipse that much cooler.

On the afternoon of Thursday, Oct. 23, 2014, the Moon will pass in front of the Sun. A giant sunspot spitting powerful x-rays will make the eclipse that much cooler. The rare combination is pairing a powerful x-class solar flare with a partial shadow cast by the moon to create what will surely be a dramatic effect.

The sunspot providing the eclipse enhancement is already the largest seen in 25 years and its activity is expected to continue for a while. On Oct. 22, the energy released from from the solar flare was measured at a strength stronger than a million times the yield of every nuclear weapon on Earth.

Viewing is expected to be best in the United States and Canada. NASA has provided a handy chart to determine best peak viewing times by major city.

Requisite safety reminder: don’t look directly into the sun! If you’re not in the US or Canada or your view is obstructed by cloud cover, you can see a livecast of the event from the Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter in Arizona.

[via Universe Today]