STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

[MIKA27]

Insane Car Crash Somehow Barely Avoids Hitting A Group Of Bystanders

The first time I saw this video of a car crash during the Jolly Rally Valle d’Aosta 2014, I thought it was a scene from Final Destination. The second time I saw it, I thought it was some amateur fake. I’ve watched it multiple times now and I’m still not sure how the out of control, flipping car managed to avoid hitting people.

I mean, the speeding rally car tries to round the corner but ends up catapulting itself and flipping right where a group of bystanders are watching the race. It did not look good. But as improbable as this crash was, no one was hurt. The car was destroyed but none of the bystanders were hit and driver Piero Scavone and navigator Diego D’Hérin didn’t sustain any injury even though they were inside the car.

MIKA: That my friends is what is called a miracle, caught on camera.

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Short Film: Machines Keep On Fighting A War Even Though Everyone Is Dead

Here’s an uncomfortable vision of the future that will make your soul tremble a little bit: what if we built automated machines to fight our wars for us? What if those machines killed everyone on the planet? And what happens when the war is over and everyone is dead but those machines are still programmed to fight?

There’s no more war to fight and no people to control the machines but the machines can’t stop. It would destroy the planet! Dima Fedotof, the guy who created this short film in CG, explains the premise behind his film:

Despite the fact that mankind is killed, the war still continues. War continued with automated system left by people. One of the last surviving bomber and its pilot still performs its task. The city is dead for a long time. Dead people who built it. Dead people who gave the order to destroy the city. And war will continue until subside echo of humanity.But life will always find a way to survive. Cassette bomb submunitions became a fortress for the grass.

[MIKA27]

Cool Photo Of a Rafale Pilot Flying Over Baghdad

Impressive shot of a French Air Force Rafale jet flying over Baghdad en route to attack ISIS targets in Mosul, Iraq, from its base in Al Dhafra, United Arab Emirates.

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Unbelievable View Of The International Space Station

You are looking at the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer onboard the ISS. The news is that, “after accumulating years of data, [...] there are significantly more positrons than expected at the highest energies detected.” Scientists believe their origin may be the destruction of dark matter, which is amazing.

After accumulating years of data, it has now become clear that there are significantly more positrons than expected at the highest energies detected. The excess may have a very exciting and profound origin — the annihilation of distant but previously undetected dark matter particles. However, it is also possible that astronomical sources such as pulsars are creating the unexplained discrepancy. The topic remains a very active area of research.

It’s an exciting scientific discovery, but what really captures my attention is this image, of the ISS and the AMS, “with a Space Shuttle docked on the far right, a Russian Soyuz capsule docked on the far left, and the blue Earth that houses all nations visible across the background.” I still can’t believe that this thing is up there, flying at 7.71km/s. The photo is unreal.

[MIKA27]

Japan’s Deadly Ontake Volcano Seen From Space

Ontake volcano in Japan on Sept. 30, 2014.

France’s Pleiades satellite captured this image of vapor, fumes and toxic gases escaping from Ontake volcano in Japan on Sept. 30, three days after the eruption that has killed more than 54 people. This is Japan’s deadliest eruption in over a century.

Despite the country’s robust volcano monitoring system, this eruption came with virtually no warning. Scientists suspect this is because it was a phreatic eruption caused by steam rather than magma. When magma moves beneath a volcano, it can be picked up by seismic monitoring networks. In a phreatic eruption, ground water is superheated rapidly by the heat from magma. Because steam takes up more volume than liquid water, if enough of it is heated quickly enough with no way to escape, it can blast apart the overlying rock, pulverizing it into ash.

Japan sits on the edge of two colliding tectonic plates. The Pacific plate is being forced beneath other plates all along its border, which is known as the Ring of Fire. The ongoing collision generates earthquakes, such as the 2004 Sumatra quake that caused an Indian ocean tsunami and killed more than 200,000 people. As the Pacific plate is pushed into the Earth’s mantle, surface water and hydrated minerals heat up, which in turn melts the mantle and generates the magma that causes volcanic eruptions. Japan has more than 100 active volcanoes.

The image below, captured by NASA’s Aqua satellite shows Ontake the day it erupted.

[MIKA27]

Some Say This Tagalong Asteroid is the Earth’s New Moon

What qualifies a space rock to be called a moon? Most would define a “moon” as a satellite that orbits a planet but, if you think outside the circle and include celestial bodies that spend a lot of time in the vicinity of a planet, then 2014 OL339, a newly discovered asteroid, is the Earth’s newest moon.

Asteroid 2014 OL339 was discovered on July 29 by astronomer Farid Char of the Chilean University of Antofagasta. It’s 150 meters (490 feet) wide and has been traveling with the Earth for at least 775 years. However, it’s not in orbit around our planet. 2014 OL339 is in what astronomers call a “resonant orbit,” meaning it is circling the Sun in an orbit close enough to Earth’s that they exert gravitational forces on each other.

2014 OL339 is in an elliptical orbit and takes 364.92 days to travel around the sun. The gravitational pull of the Earth gives it an eccentric wobble which causes it to look like it’s circling backward in relation to the stars. Because of that, the orbit is slowly destabilizing and the partnership with Earth will probably end in around 165 years, giving them a 1,000 year relationship.

Astronomers refer to these celestial traveling companions as quasi-satellites and Earth has a total of four so far, with 2014 OL339 joining 2004 GU9, 2006 FV35 and 2013 LX28. Jupiter leads the solar system with six documented quasi-satellites, although it probably has more yet to be discovered.

Should we get excited about the discovery of 2014 OL339? It’s not really in orbit around Earth and is not even planning to stick around. Unless my dog starts howling at it or a werewolf shows up the next time it’s in a full quasi-satellite phase, 2014 OL339 is no moon to me.

[MIKA27]

KAWASAKI W650 HARDTAIL BY DEUS

The Kawasaki W650 is a motorcycle that’s found a loving home in Australia, the classic looks combined with modern reliability make it very nearly the perfect motorcycle for those who want an engine bolted between two wheels with no additional complications.

This simplicity has made the W650 and the follow up model, the W800, very popular with custom motorcycle builders from Tokyo to Sydney. We’ve seen the usual cafe racers, scramblers and flat trackers but we haven’t seen many hard tails – which is a little surprising considering the close Triumph design influences used on the Kawasaki.

The custom you see here was a bespoke customer build for a Sydney resident by the original Camperdown location of Deus Ex Machina – the client already owns a 1969 Camaro and a pair of Honda CBR1000 track-only Fireblades but he wanted something a little less balls-to-the-wall for Sunday afternoon rides and so a low milage W650 was sourced and the guys in the garage set to work.

The first order of business was to strip the bike back to its individual components before loading the frame onto the jig and welding on a custom hardtail section. Before reassembly the engine was painted satin black along with the frame, a pair of fenders and a chopped Yamaha SR400 fuel tank was painted matte black and the bespoke exhaust was ceramic coated in white.

The completed bike can be seen in full here via Deus Ex Machina, or you can click here to see their full back catalogue of motorcycles.

[MIKA27]

MOON SHADOW VILLA IN KOH SAMUI THAILAND

When it comes to tropical island resorts, we’re not sure it gets any better than this. Say hello to the stunning Moon Shadow Villa, designed by the award winning architectural team at Neo Concept Design & Construction.

Nestled in the hills of the Koh Samui island in Thailand, this tranquil retreat is the ultimate vacation getaway. There are a total of 4 bedrooms spanning across the three separate pavilions, all of which feature breathtaking ocean views. Of course our favorite part is the stunning infinity pool extending off the living room of the main pavilion. To ensure you have everything you could ever need and want, Moon Shadow also comes with two live-in staff alongside a villa manager. This private villa can be rented any time of year, but it will cost you. Depending on when you book, you can expect to pay anywhere from $1,090 to $1,790 for single night. [Purchase]

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STAR WARS MEETS WORLD WAR II

Mashups aren’t only for music. You’ve got food mashups like lobster mac & cheese, and now, as you can see in these awesome prints from Thirteenth Floor, art can provide a perfect canvas for mixing two completely different tastes together.

Injecting the Star Wars universe into World War II battle scenes yields some surprisingly believable and frame-worthy masterpieces. There’s “3 on 3,” with some seriously outgunned soldiers taking on a trio of AT-ATs; “Charge!” showcases a soldier running right at a Stormtrooper; “Dogfight” takes the skirmish to the skies with TIE Fighters lasering down a warplane; and “Invasion” has a handful of soldiers facing some long odds with the Death Star staring down at them from above. Each 11″ x 17″ piece is printed on 100lb matte card stock, and you can buy one for $10 a pop or the set for $25 [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

AGE YOUR OWN WHISKY IN 24 HOURS

Bottom shelf booze is bottom shelf for a reason. Sure you save some cash by knocking a glass of it back, but you’re missing out on all the wonderful flavors a whiskey or other libation could have. With Whiskey Elements, you can turn some of that affordable whiskey into something much finer in just 24 hours. Choose what element you want to add—vanilla, oakiness, maple, smoke, peat—and drop the corresponding Whiskey Element into your hooch. By having the liquid move through such narrow spaces, it infuses the flavor quickly and transforms your cheap whiskey into something more complex and tasty. The project is currently on Kickstarter, and you can pick up a set of two for just $12. Whiskey Elements:

http://youtu.be/k5Z_jWxFJfQ

[MIKA27]

STUSSY X TIMBERLAND EURO HIKER

Stussy have teamed up with Timberland for a special version of one of the most popular Timberland boots, the Euro Hiker. Stussy’s version of the classic silhouette features premium, full grain leather, trail grip rubber sole and Stussy SS link logo on the tongue. The durable outdoor performance piece of footwear is offered in two distinct colorways, wheat and brown.

[MIKA27]

WINDOWS 10 LOOKS BACKWARD TO GO FORWARD

Like clockwork, major software outfits are largely on the hook to deliver major updates to their operating systems on a yearly basis. It’s an unwritten rule, but both Microsoft and Apple (as well as Google on the mobile front) have kept the updates rolling on a regular basis for as long as many users can remember. With Windows 8 still acting as a thorn in Microsoft’s side, the company is likely relieved be at a point where it’s comfortable talking about Windows 9. Er, Windows 10.

The company’s latest desktop OS was revealed to a small group of reporters this past week, and while there’s still much to be filled in prior to its release in the middle of 2015, plenty of beans were spilled to those in attendance. In a move that struck laypeople as odd, Microsoft opted to skip the number 9 and head straight to 10 for its next major release. For programmers, however, the move made sense — a popular string of code used a score ago by developers to detect if Windows 95 or 98 was being used could theoretically wreak havoc on a “Windows 9” operating system. We may never know the truth behind the chosen nomenclature, but we do know a thing or two about the software that’s set to replace Windows Phone and eventually show up on the Xbox.

WHAT’S NEW?

As processing power grows, Microsoft’s encouraging users to multitask more often with Task View. Permanently fixed in the lower task bar, this mode gives users a quick look at every single application that’s currently open, and enables them to easily select a different one. There’s obvious inspiration drawn from Spaces and Expose in Apple’s OS X operating system, but anything that reduces a reliance on Alt-Tab must be welcomed without judgement.

Multiple desktops are another nod to the increased power that many users have at their disposal, and also caters to enterprise users who need to run very different applications across monitors that sit side-by-side. In a sense, this enables power users to run two machines across two monitors with a single instance of Windows, a single keyboard, and a single mouse. In theory, this could be useful for pairing up a Windows desktop and a Surface Pro 3 sitting next to each other, though support for instantaneous screen extension has yet to be officially announced.

Yes, it’s 2014, and yes, the Command Prompt is getting some love. As Microsoft provides yet another tip of the hat to enterprise users, the Ctrl+V paste command now functions in Command Prompt. We’re hearing that developers are simply too stoked to slam the company for taking this long to enable such a thing.

Microsoft is following the lead of Apple and Google by unifying what has become fragmented. (As they put it, “One product family. One platform. One store.”) The reality is that Windows 10 will be developed to run smoothly across phones (replacing Windows Phone in time) and tablets (putting Windows RT in the grave that it belongs in) as well as laptops and desktops. It’s a bold move, but a sensible one. It’s hard to imagine Windows Phone users loving their platform being pushed aside so soon after launch, but considering its approximate 3 percent market share, something drastic had to be done.

“Metro” will be seriously minimized. The tile-focused interface that Microsoft pushed so deliberately in Windows 8 is taking a back seat in Windows 10, with Microsoft insisting that everything on its new OS will be capable of running in a conventional window.

WHAT’S NEW AGAIN?

Despite Microsoft’s efforts to convince the masses that Windows 10 is yet another revolution in the space, its primary source of inspiration is obvious: Windows XP. With Steve Ballmer stepping aside and Satya Nadella taking the helm as CEO, it feels as if Microsoft is returning to what was last successful as it attempts to make progress. A refocusing on Windows and an intentional overlooking of tiles makes Windows 10 feel more like the Windows that most people are familiar with. Neither Windows 7 nor Windows 8 succeeded in thrilling consumers, and many enterprise customers have refused to upgrade due to a perpetual wave of negative press.

To wit, Microsoft spent a surprising amount of time speaking to its enterprise customer base as it unveiled Windows 10. Make no mistake: Windows 10 is being built first and foremost for giant organizations that Microsoft hopes will spend millions on OS upgrades. It’s putting the Start Bar back in its proper place, reversing a decision made in Windows 8 and replacing an icon that hasn’t changed over the course of five presidencies.

It’s also unifying its Store, where developers will be able to build, publish, and sell software. For years, software was either compatible with Windows or it wasn’t, and then things got entirely more complicated with Windows RT, the Windows Phone Marketplace, and the Xbox’s storefront. Moving forward, Microsoft’s hoping to make programming across devices easier, which could persuade some iOS developers to stop ignoring Windows Phone.

Throughout their presentation, Microsoft insisted that Windows 10 would not introduce anything that older Windows users would “have to learn.” This is Microsoft’s way of returning to what works, and leaving the expansion efforts in the hands of third-party developers — a model that has worked out quite well for Apple and its App Store.

WHERE’S WINDOWS HEADED?

Everywhere, and those unafraid of using a work in progress can download the Technical Preview right now. Windows Phone, initially unveiled in 2007, will slowly fade while Windows 10 is ushered onto new handsets. With quad-core processors now ready for phones, the next wave of mobile hardware will pack plenty of oomph to run a full-fledged OS. Beyond that, Microsoft’s new unifying mantra has led many to understand that Windows 10 will eventually find itself under the hood of the Xbox line. Microsoft has confessed that it’s not looking for a single user interface to apply across all of its devices, but it will rely on one product family alongside “tailored experiences for each device”.

The move could prove to be pivotal for Microsoft. To date, Google and Apple have dominated the ecosystem war, and while OS X and iOS aren’t apt to fuse into one platform anytime soon, features such as Continuity — which enables an email started on a Mac to be resumed on an iPad or iPhone — have made users very comfortable buying into the product family. With Windows 10, Microsoft is aiming to offer something similar, but based on a familiar face. Perhaps it’s going to require a few steps back in order to get Microsoft’s entire house ready for the next leap forward.

[MIKA27]

Has North Korea’s Kim Jong Un Been Toppled?

Out of sight for a month, young Kim is supposedly ill. But rumors are swirling he’s been deposed—and North Korea’s second most powerful man now feels confident enough to travel South.

Hwang Pyong So must be feeling pretty good about himself right now. At the latest Supreme People’s Assembly meeting, he was made vice chairman of the National Defense Commission. This was after his promotion to director of the General Political Bureau of the Korean People’s Army, making him the top political officer in the military. In a country where there is supposed to be no No. 2 official, he is called the second-most powerful figure.

Now he has crossed the border into South Korea on a one-day, short-notice trip, triggering hopes of reconciliation between the arch-rival republics—and heightening speculation about the fate of Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s young supremo, who has not been seen in public since September 3.

Hwang’s trip South on Saturday comes on the heels of a widely publicized reportthat Kim has been deposed. Jang Jin Sung, a former North Korean counterintelligence and propaganda official, is claiming that the Organization and Guidance Department of the Korean Workers’ Party, responsible for promotions within the regime, has taken over the country. Kim, according to Jang, is now merely a “puppet.”

Leading Korea watchers, however, say they doubt Kim has lost his position at the center of the state founded by his grandfather and passed down to his father, his immediate predecessor. “This kind of travel would be way too out there if anything serious was going on in North Korea, so I don’t think it’s a sign of a coup,” John Delury of Yonsei University in Seoul told The Washington Post of Hwang’s jaunt down to Incheon, near the South Korean capital. Andrei Lankov of nearby Kookmin University, meanwhile, called the surprise visit merely a part of Pyongyang’s recent “charm offensive.” “North Korean diplomacy has been engaged in concerted, well-arranged, well-managed efforts to improve relations with pretty much the entire outside world,” he told the Post. “And you would not expect it to happen with nobody in control.”

Lankov and Delury make a commonsense point, but Jang, a defector to Seoul, maintains that Kim was removed from power last year. That means Hwang could have consolidated his position in the interim and now feels secure enough to travel for a day.

Indeed, there are signs that not only has Hwang risen, but also that Kim has fallen. The young ruler did not preside over last’s month meeting of the Supreme People’s Assembly, the first time that has happened since he took power after his father’s death in December 2011. Yes, he may have been ill, but if he was politically healthy, the meeting would have been postponed until he was able to appear.

Also extremely unusual: The reports on the meeting from the state-run Korean Central News Agency mention Kim—first secretary of the Workers’ Party, first chairman of the National Defense Commission, and supreme commander of the People’s Army, all the top positions in the state and party—only at the end and only in passing. In a regime like North Korea’s, these state media reports spell political infirmity.

And is Kim Jong Un really ill? He was last seen in public walking with a limp—he probably has gout —and state media has reported he is not well, but that is not what one member of Hwang’s 11-member delegation told South Korea’s Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae on Saturday. The next day, Ryoo said he was assured that there were “no problems” with Kim’s health. But if Kim were well, there would have been no reason for him to have stayed out of sight for a month, especially during the Supreme People’s Assembly meeting.

It is true that Jang Jin Sung’s storyline may not completely add up. After all, as influential as the Organization and Guidance Department may be—some even think it is more important than the National Defense Commission—it is not an agency built to grab and exercise power.

Nonetheless, there are too many rumors and reports to allow one to conclude that all is well in Pyongyang. The story that the city is in lockdown —no permits to travel in or out issued since September 27—suggests that an extraordinary event has occurred. The mid-December execution of Jang Song Thaek, once thought to be Kim’s regent, and the subsequent eradication of his nationwide patronage network are symptoms of distress.

The continual purges during Kim’s short tenure cannot be a good sign. In the space of 15 months he switched out his army chief three times, and it appears he replaced about half of the top 218 military and administrative officials. Pyongyang, according to the Financial Times, has not seen such turmoil since the late 1950s, when his grandfather Kim Il Sung eliminated opposition after his failure in the Korean War. As famed Korea watcher Bruce Bechtol has pointed out, the constant purges of senior civilians and flag officers over the last few years is proof of Kim’s inability to cement his position at the top of the political system.

“Senior officials in North Korea’s Workers’ Party and military are increasingly objecting to policies or ignoring orders from leader Kim Jong Un, leading to rumors that his grip on the country is weakening,” noted the Chosun Ilbo, the most widely read newspaper in South Korea, in late July. Defying instructions would have been unthinkable during the tenure of his father or grandfather.

Of course, in the world’s most opaque regime, almost any scenario is plausible. We should know a lot more, however, when we see who is on the reviewing stand during the October 10 celebration of the founding of the Workers’ Party.

Until then, we can say there are signs that Kim Jong Un has lost substantial power and will soon become, if he is not already, a figurehead.

[MIKA27]

NASA is funding research on deep sleep for transporting astronauts to Mars

Putting space travelers into a state of deep sleep has been a staple of interstellar science fiction for quite some time, but despite originating as a far-fetched concept, the idea of using suspended animation to enable deep space travel might soon become science fact.

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, here’s a quick rundown. Traveling far into space is a tricky endeavor. With existing technology, traveling to a planet like Mars takes about 180 days, for example. Keeping a crew of people alive (and entertained) in space for that long isn’t hard, but it does require a lot of food, water, energy, and other supplies. This makes manned long-distance space travel extremely expensive, since hauling more supplies requires huge amounts of storage space, and thousands of additional dollars just to get it all that stuff into orbit.

In theory, suspended animation would help solve this problem. If astronauts could be placed in a deep sleep during the journey, they would require far fewer resources along the way. Instead, they could just be put to sleep at the beginning and woken back up when they arrive at their destination.

Now, with a manned mission to Mars likely in its sights, NASA has begun to explore the viability of such an idea, and has recently funded a study by Atlanta-based aerospace engineering firm SpaceWorks Enterprises to help work out the kinks in the process.

The bulk of the study revolves around placing humans in torpor — a state in which metabolic and physiological activity is drastically slowed down. To do this, the company has developed a three-stage system. Step one involves sedating the person and using a neuromuscular blockade to prevent movement, whereas step two is to physically lower the person’s body temperature by about 10 degrees farenheit, thereby reducing cellular activity and metabolic rate by around 50 to 70 percent. This is achieved with the help of cooling pads and a nasally-inhaled coolant that lowers the subject’s temperature from the inside out. Then, once in torpor, the subject is hooked into an intravenous drip that supplies their body with all the nutrients needed to keep them alive.

Using these methods, SpaceWorks has reportedly managed to keep a person in stasis for a week — an impressive feat, but even so, there’s still much work to be done before the technology is ready for primetime. In addition to extending the length of the stasis period, the company has a handful of other hurdles to overcome. The potential onset of pneumonia, muscle atrophy, and bone loss have yet to be addressed; and the long term-effects of stasis on human organs is still largely unknown. SpaceWorks still has a long road ahead of it, but with a few more years of research, it’s not unreasonable to think that suspended animation, cryostasis, torpor –whatever you want to call it– might finally bring a manned mission to Mars within reach.

[MIKA27]

This Woman Has One Of The Best, Most Badass Jobs In The World

Liz Kaszynski has one of the best jobs in the world: She is one of the 10 aerial photographers working at Lockheed Martin, taking pictures from the back of fighter jets and hanging from helicopter doors all over the world. Watch her talking about it here and be jealous.

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The Mysterious Sunken Treasure of the Salton Sea

Located in the barren, sun scorched desert of southern California is an enigmatic and somewhat unearthly sight; a lake sprawled out amidst the parched, baked earth, ringed by wind blasted ghost towns and with beaches of crushed fish bones rather than sand. This is the Salton Sea, a shallow, saline lake that lies along the San Andreas fault in the lowest elevations of the Salton Basin in California’s Colorado Desert, at an elevation of 228 feet below sea level, just 5 feet higher than Death Valley. The lake is huge. It covers 362 square miles, is 35 miles by 15 miles in size, with an average depth of 29.9 feet, a maximum depth of 52 feet, and contains 7.3 acre feet of water that is 30% saltier than the Pacific Ocean.

As impressive a sight as this immense oasis within the desert is, the Salton Sea is not a natural feature of this dry wasteland, and should in fact never have existed. The sea was created by accident between the years of 1905 and 1907, when shoddily built irrigation canals allowed the Colorado river to burst forth into the desert. For two years, the entire flow of the river filled the basin unabated, inundating crops and submerging whole towns. Repair efforts were impeded by financial problems and political infighting as the water surged unchecked into the region. The relentless influx of water was finally staunched when levees were made comprised of boulders dumped within one of the larger breaches. By that time, the sea had covered nearly 400 square miles and was the largest body of water in the entire state of California.

The Salton Sea

At first it was thought that the sea would eventually evaporate in the parched, desert landscape, just as had happened with other ancient lakes created in the region by flooding of the Colorado River, but the sea remained unchanged. Agricultural runoff from the nearby, prosperous farming areas of Imperial Valley fed the sea, preventing it from drying up and allowing it to maintain its massive size. The newly formed lake was named the Salton Sea.

Over the years, the Salton Sea would see various types of development along its shores. The Navy opened a test base here in the 1940s, which served as a seaplane operations facility during World War II. It was here that planes, including the infamous Enola ***, dropped dummy bombs in preparation for their fateful Hiroshima run. Another military base called Camp Dunlop was also in operation here during WWII as a desert training center for the army. In the 1950s, The California Department of Fish and Game began efforts to stock the sea with fish. Thousands of fish captured in the Gulf of California were released into the sea and many species thrived in the salty water. As a result, the sea became an important fishery, and fishermen flocked here to build fishing communities. Migratory birds also flocked here and it became a major stop over point for millions of migrating birds.

By the 1960s, developers began to realize the potential of turning this inland sea, with its year round sunny weather and close vicinity to the Los Angeles and San Diego metropolitan areas, into a tourist resort. The nearby resort of Palm Springs was flourishing, so to capitalize on this, luxurious resorts, yacht marinas, housing developments, and golf courses sprang up along the sea, and the area was marketed as “Palm Springs on a beach.” During this time, the Salton Sea became a bustling resort town with thousands of visitors every year, and it was a paradise for swimmers, boaters, and fishermen. Thousands of plots for homes were sold, yet as time went on the sea’s popularity waned as it was too hot and was starting to be pervaded by the smell of the dead fish that were appearing as a result of increasing salinity levels, as well as of the stink of heat-baked algae that fed on the fertilizers dumped into the lake from the nearby Imperial Valley agricultural region. In addition, with no natural inlets or outlets, the chemical levels from the constant agricultural drainage was making the waters of the sea murkier and murkier, changing the once blue waters into a muddy mess with an overpowering, unpleasant stench.

A postcard from the Salton Sea’s resort heyday

In 1977, the coup de grace of earnest development of the area came in the form of Tropical Storm Doreen, which raged through the Imperial Valley and caused widespread flooding. Many of the thriving settlements and resort areas that had taken hold along the Salton Sea’s shore were badly flooded and in same cases totally submerged. While some communities stuck through it all, many were abandoned and left to rot in the fly infested, smelly muck. The 80s and 90s saw several mass die offs of fish and birds that littered the shores with their rotting carcasses and overwhelmed clean up efforts. In many places, the beaches are comprised of not sand, but the granulated bones of countless fish and birds.

As a result of all of this, although the area has been cleaned up in recent years and is the home of the popular Salton Sea Recreation Area, the sea still has an eerie, haunted quality to it. The shores in some places are littered with rotting dead fish and birds, and many of the abandoned ghost towns of the resorts are still there, as well as the desolate concrete ruins of the military bases from the 1940s, looming out of the mud like ancient sea creatures. Along the beaches, mired up to their doorhandles in sludge, are abandoned cars that are covered in muck and often used as perches for the many species of bird that come to rest here. Some of the settlements that still remain are inhabited by misfit survivalists and those wishing to escape from society, with the towns taking on an almost Road Warrior-esque atmosphere. Submerged under water is the lost city of Salton, which was inundated over 100 years ago when the Salton Sea first was created and has turned into an artificial reef of sorts with fish swimming along streets and through buildings where people once lived. The Salton Sea is truly the kind of place that invites mystery, legend, and myth.

Abandoned ruins along the Salton Sea shore

The sea has often been likened to a sort of Bermuda Triangle of sorts, a black hole from which planes and boats sometimes never return. This myth was perpetuated during the years when the area was the home of military bases during WWII. It was during this time that more than three dozen men and their planes were lost here, often under inexplicable circumstances. According to Navy records, four Wildcats, two Corsairs, two Hellcats, four patrol planes, two Helldivers and 10 Avengers were all lost here, crashing into the sea often under clear, calm conditions. In many cases, the wreckage of these downed planes has never been found. Boats have also reportedly sunk here for no discernible reason.

One of more enduring legends of strange disappearances in the Salton Sea goes all the way back to before the sea was even formed, when the region was home to an entirely different lake that filled the same basin. In the 16th century, the Salton Basin was flooded very much like it is now, with a huge lake lying exactly where the current Salton Sea is found now. This lake was called Lake Cahuilla. It was an enormous body of water that was the size of the state of Delaware and connected to the Sea of Cortez, which in modern days is known as the Gulf of California. It is here that the story of a lost Spanish Galleon loaded with pearls and gold coins comes in.

Spanish galleon

During the existence of Lake Cahuilla in the 16th century, it was possible to navigate there through the Sea of Cortez. It is said that English and Dutch pirates prowled the waters off the entrance to the gulf, but that one treasure laden Spanish Galleon managed to slip past them and ended up sailing into the lake. The story goes that the galleon ran aground on a sandbar or landslide, after which the crew were forced to abandon it and escape overland through the desert, leaving the ship and its cargo of gold and pearls behind. Over time, the lake disappeared and it is said the ship sank beneath the sands.

Over the ensuing centuries, stories have abounded of an ancient ship in the middle of the desert, buried and unburied by the shifting sands. In 1774, a mule driver named Tiburcio Manquerna supposedly stumbled across a large cache of pearls lying amidst the desert sands. He grabbed as many of the pearls as he could carry and walked out of the desert a rich man. Later, when he went back for more, the mule driver could not relocate the exact location and it is said that he spent the rest of his life searching for it.

In 1870, a prospector by the name of Charley Clusker claimed to have come across an ornately carved Spanish Galleon sitting in the desert. The prospector described how the ship was located in boiling springs and alkaline mud. The excited prospector, figuring that he had hit the mother lode, was not prepared to salvage it at the time and so he went back with plans to come back equipped to get his treasure. When he made the journey back to where he thought he had seen the ship, it was gone.

Although it is unclear if this is related to the Spanish Galleon, in 1949, three students of UCLA went out into the desert to follow up on a story they had heard from a Cahuilla Indian of a serpent shaped canoe he had seen in the area in 1917, which the students thought may be a “Viking ship” blown off course. The students were well prepared, with irrigation maps from 1910 and various published accounts from the 1800s, and they departed on their quest from Laguna Salada in Baja California. It is unknown what ultimately became of this expedition or if they ever found what they were looking for.

Over the years there were many such tales of miners and hikers coming across the haunting sight of a Spanish Galleon half buried in the desert, but nothing ever became of it and the ship always seemed to disappear back into the sands from whence it came. When the Salton Sea was created in 1905, it is believed that the galleon was also submerged and lies at the murky bottom, lodged deep in the mud at the bottom of the lake to this day. Several expeditions of divers have descended into the depths of the lake in search of the lost treasure, but they have only managed to find the wreckage of planes that crashed into the sea during its heyday as a spot for military bases. There has been no sign of the legendary Spanish Galleon or its treasure.

Is there an ancient lost treasure buried at the bottom of the Salton sea? Perhaps the answer lies out there, ensconced in the sludgy bottom among the skeletons of warplanes and other boats in their watery graves, perpetually part of the mystery of this bizarre desert sea.

[MIKA27]

Scientists Will Drill Directly Into A Fault In New Zealand That's Overdue For An Earthquake

The Alpine fault is the most dangerous fault in New Zealand — and one of the most dangerous in the world. It ruptures with an 8.0-magnitude earthquake roughly once every 300 years, and with the last one in 1717, it’s ripe for another. So what are we going to do about it? Why, drill a hole 1500m deep into it.

For all that we know about earthquakes in 2014, we’re still terribly lousy at predicting them. Scientists have no idea what happens inside an active fault the months, days and minutes leading up to a quake. The Deep Fault Drilling Project in New Zealand will the first time scientists have ever drilled into an active fault overdue for a big earthquake.

The borehole, about 1500m deep and 10cm in diameter, will reach down into the “crush zone” where one plate grinds into the other. A whole bevy of sensors will take measurements on temperature, pressure, sound and images of the active fault. Rock samples will also be retrieved from the borehole to study the scars left by past seismic activity.

“We really don’t know what we will find once we get deep into the fault zone,” the project’s co-leader, Rupert Sutherland, said in a Victoria University press release. The drilling project is unprecedented. Scientist have drilled deep into a fault once before: a portion of the San Andreas Fault in California that experiences frequent but small earthquakes. The Deep Fault Drilling Project is a completely different beast, though, peeking inside a fault that is likely to unleash a huge and deadly quake. Whatever they find, I’m glad to be far, far way.

[MIKA27]

This One-Minute Short Film is Creepy

Filminute is an international film festival that challenges filmmakers from all over the world to make engaging one-minute movies. You might think 60 seconds are not enough to make you laugh, cry or even scare you to death. This year’s winner — directed by Spanish filmmaker Ignacio F. Rodó — will prove you wrong.

[MIKA27]

Multispectral Imaging Found Magna Carta Passages Lost For 250 Years

Next year is the 800th anniversary of sealing the Magna Carta. To prepare for the milestone, British Library conservationists used multispectral imaging to save parts of the text thought to be lost.

Multispectral imaging uses different coloured lights to illuminate faded texts. The scientists placed a high-resolution camera over one of the British Library’s two original 1215 Magna Carta manuscripts, using LED lights, including UV and infrared lights, to tease passages back from the ravages of time.

The version they went over is called the ‘burnt manuscript’ and had been damaged in a fire in 1731, so it’s even more bedraggled than a normal 800-year-old book. Yet colour UV images still showed parts of the ancient book that you can’t see just by looking at it.

Want to see what it says? Me too, but we have to wait until the British Library’s exhibition next year. It will run from March to September in London, so you have plenty of time to book a plane ticket.

[MIKA27]

These Clever Mud Hut Designs Rethink Cheap Rural Living

Mud huts are normally associated with the most basic level of just-scraping-by living: utilitarian, cheap, but hardly the height of design (or even comfort). The Nka Foundation wondered what would happen if the mud hut was modernised: same basic materials, same low cost, but 21st century techniques.

The result was a competition for young grads and students, in which the aim was to design a $US6000 single-family dwelling, on a 334sqm plot, making the most use of earth and local labour.

Three designs won out, with first prize going to a gorgeous, space-maximising design that looks inspired by Viking longhouses, if you ask me. Moving forward, the Nka Foundation is hoping to prototype all three winning designs in Ghana, in the space of about 10 weeks.

It’s not the first time the Nka Foundation has run a design competition: the last attempt was a smaller-scale competition, to build a 3m x 3m ‘learning shelter’ out of mud. [Arch Daily]

[MIKA27]

Insane 22m Canyon Backflip Is Not The Craziest Thing In This Video

Jeff Herbertson’s backflip over a 22m canyon at Red Bull Rampage 2014 is pretty insane. But somehow it seems easier and less terrifying than the beginning of his run, which made me almost fall out of my chair. No matter how many of these videos I see, I would never get use to them.

And, hey, he only made 7th place. Crazy.

[Fuzz]

This One-Minute Short Film is Creepy

This kinda of film has been bouncing around for a while. Lots of youtubers have made their own adaptation of the "two sentence horror story". Seen better and worse versions.

[MIKA27]

How NASA Will Launch And Test Its New Spaceship On December 4

NASA has published a cool video showing how the first test of Orion — the spaceship that will take us to the Moon and Mars — will be. The Orion spaceship will be launched on top of a Delta rocket on December 4.

[MIKA27]

Screw Cars, Meet The Google Street View Camel

Google Street View has taken us to the ends of the world. But now, its taking us where no Street View camera has taken us before — into the Arabian desert on the back of a 10-year-old camel named Raffia.

Thanks to the camera-strapped camel, we now have some pretty awesome 360-degree tours of the Liwa Oasis, along with a delightful camel-shaped silhouette to go with it.

While backpackers have strapped Google’s Trekker’s on their backs in the past when cars couldn’t cut it, according to Joyce Baz, spokeswoman for Google in the Middle East and North Africa, Raffia was a no-brainer:

With every environment and every location, we try to customise the capture and how we do it for that part of the environment. In the case of Liwa we fashioned it in a way so that it goes on a camel so that it can capture imagery in the best, most authentic and least damaging way.

And as far as damaging goes, Google Street View cars have had their fair share of run-ins. Let’s hope Raffia had better luck.

[MIKA27]

Space Detective Is Now A Job That Exists

Want to use some damning images from Google Earth to back up your case in a lawsuit? Right now it’s not quite that easy. Which is why a satellite imaging specialist and space lawyer (actual thing) have just formed what is about to become every NASA-loving kid’s dream job: the world’s very first space detective agency.

Dubbed Air & Space Evidence Ltd of London, the agency is Raymond Harris and Raymond Purdy’s attempt at giving the public the means to produce lawful satellite-based evidence in court. Because these photoscan provide the proof people need in everything from homeowner boundary disputes to lawsuits over environmental assaults (illegal logging, for instance). As New Scientist explains:

“Trials have been collapsing because courts cannot be convinced of the authenticity of image data,” says Purdy. For instance, people cannot be sure a given satellite was working on the day in question, or that the area of land imaged is actually the land at issue.

Plus, as we all know, it’s all too easy to alter digital images after the fact, so in order for an image to stand up in a court of law, it needs to come with a lot of data to backup its validity. Elaborating, Harris said “you need strong archiving procedures plus information on when it was captured and what happened to it subsequently.”

And where satellite images just won’t do (read: cases that require higher resolution shots), the pair plans to put their very own team of drones to work. So for times when, say, a case requires a shot of a specific licence plate number, the space detectives will have to lean on the aerial drone footage option.

Still, especially in these early days, the majority of the work will come find them hunting down images from orbiting satellites run by startups like Skybox Imaging, which has recently been attempting to make its very own real-time Google Earth of sorts. And with access to these kinds of databases becoming increasingly less expensive, you can bet this won’t be the only set of space detectives for long.