Recycled radioactive metal contaminates consumer products

Thousands of everyday products and materials containing radioactive metals are surfacing across the United States and around the world.

Common kitchen cheese graters, reclining chairs, women’s handbags and tableware manufactured with contaminated metals have been identified, some after having been in circulation for as long as a decade. So have fencing wire and fence posts, shovel blades, elevator buttons, airline parts and steel used in construction.

A Scripps Howard News Service investigation has found that — because of haphazard screening, an absence of oversight and substantial disincentives for businesses to report contamination — no one knows how many tainted goods are in circulation in the United States.

But thousands of consumer goods and millions of pounds of unfinished metal and its byproducts have been found to contain low levels of radiation, and experts think the true amount could be much higher, perhaps by a factor of 10.

Government records of cases of contamination, obtained through state and federal Freedom of Information Act requests, illustrate the problem.

In 2006 in Texas, for example, a recycling facility inadvertently created 500,000 pounds of radioactive steel byproducts after melting metal contaminated with Cesium-137, according to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission records. In Florida in 2001, another recycler unintentionally did the same, and wound up with 1.4 million pounds of radioactive material. And in 1998, 430,000 pounds of steel laced with Cobalt-60 made it to the U.S. heartland from Brazil.

But an accounting of the magnitude of the problem is unknown because U.S. and state governments do not require scrap yards, recyclers and other businesses — a primary line of defense against rogue radiation — to screen metal goods and materials for radiation or report it when found. And no federal agency is responsible for oversight.

“Nobody’s going to know — nobody — how much has been melted into consumer goods,” said Ray Turner, an international expert on radiation with Fort Mitchell, Ky.-based River Metals Recycling. He has helped decontaminate seven metal-recycling facilities that unwittingly melted scrap containing radioactive isotopes.

“It’s your worst nightmare,” Turner said.

It is also one that has only barely begun to register as a potential threat to health and safety. …

via Recycled radioactive metal contaminates consumer products | ScrippsNews.

For a very reasonable fee, I’ll bring a Geiger counter to your house and check for radiation.

Foo fighters back? Attacking civilian jets? Mexico: Airliner Crew Reports a UFO

Image: in a Concorde flight inaugural in 1969 was filmed with a light that danced around, similar to the Foo of ’40

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Aviation technician Alfonso Salazar reports that on Saturday, June 2009 at 16:10 hours, the crew of a Fokker 110 (Click de Mexicana) reported “spherical traffic” which, according to eyewitnesses was a shining sphere resembling burnished platinum and reflecting the sun’s rays.”

The Fokker 100 was flying at an approximate altitude of 10,000 meters on the Juliet 21 air corridor. The unknown object, measuring some 10 meters in diameter), crossed the airliner’s path and was seen at it’s 8 o’clock position (lower left).

This sighting was recorded over the southern area of Cerro de la Estrella (to the east of Mexico City). Weather conditions were clear, sunny and cloudless. The crew calculated that the UFO was at an altitude of 8000 meters.

For some time now, encounters between these flying objects and airliners have increased, as they arrive or take off from the Mexican capital’s airport.

via Inexplicata-The Journal of Hispanic Ufology: Mexico: Airliner Crew Reports a UFO.

I hope giant foo fighters that disorient instruments and crew are not going to start attacking civilian jets.

I like to imagine that we are co-existing on this planet with some group of technologically advanced individuals. In the simplest version, they are Nazi exiles that evaded capture after the war. Going out further they could be a human race that split from us during evolution, or… if you go all the way out … aliens. It seem that we get into squabbles with them from time to time and there are shows of force.

Another recent incident:

An Airbus A320 experienced engine trouble shortly after taking off Wednesday from the Canary Islands and was forced to immediately turn around and make an emergency landing, Spain’s national airport authority AENA said.  The Spanish Iberworld airliner was headed from Las Palmas on the island of Gran Canaria to Oslo, Norway, AENA spokeswoman Karen Martel said from the island.  No one was hurt and the plane was in the air about 10 minutes, she told The Associated Press.  Martel denied news reports that one of the plane’s engines had caught fire, saying only it had undisclosed trouble. – cbsnews

Here is another

HOUSTON, June 3 (UPI) — Police in Liberty County, Texas, say they are working with the FBI and the Federal Aviation Administration in a review of an alleged UFO sighting. Ken DeFoor, Liberty County Sheriff’s Department chief deputy, told The Houston Chronicle Tuesday an ExpressJet Airlines pilot claimed to have seen on object flying near Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport.”The FAA is in the process of debriefing the pilot today (Tuesday),” DeFoor said. “We are going to try and come up with a more definite track of this object and its path. We are trying to find out where it came from, where it went, and who may be responsible for it.”

“No people were injured and no evasive action on part of the airplane was taken,” DeFoor added regarding the Continental Express jet the pilot was operating at the time of last Friday’s sighting. The pilot, whose identity was not reported, said the object appeared to possibly be a missile or rocket. DeFoor told the Chronicle authorities were investigating the possibility the unknown object may have been launched from the ground. – upi

Was the “rocket” round?

A search by law officers in Southeast Texas found no evidence of an object reported flying about 150 feet beneath a Continental Express plane.Liberty County Sheriff’s Department Cpl. Hugh Bishop says the pilot noted the coordinates. Bishop says deputies sought a possible launch or landing site, but “couldn’t find anything.”
ExpressJet Airlines, which operates as Continental Express, did not immediately return a call to The Associated Press for comment late Tuesday.

A pilot advised the Federal Aviation Administration that an object, possibly a missile or a rocket, passed near the plane Friday night. The plane was flying at about 13,000 feet along the southern edge of Liberty County, about 30 miles east-northeast of Houston.

Bishop had told FOX 26 the FAA plans to debrief the pilot to get a better description of the object he said. Meanwhile, officials were searching for the object itself to track who is responsible for it.

The FAA did not immediately return a call for comment. – myfox

Programmica: Supersecret codes that can’t be hacked

The future might see supersecret codes made of light, which can’t be hacked without revealing the hackers, thanks to a team of Austrian physicists who sent pairs of entangled photons across a distance of 89 miles (144 kilometers).

Entangled photons are pairs of ordinary light particles that are mysteriously connected at the quantum level.

For each pair, one photon seems to “know” what has happened to the other no matter how far apart they are, an effect Albert Einstein once referred to as “spooky action at a distance.”

Cryptographers believe that this property makes entangled photons ideal for sending secret messages.

While the method won’t prevent people from intercepting a communique, if someone does, the entangled pair will instantly reveal the spy.

“You immediately know that there was somebody on the line,” team member Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna told.

Transmitting photons over long distances is difficult, because the beam quickly loses intensity, like the fading reach of a flashlight.

This makes the entangled photons harder to detect the farther they travel.

“We lose many photons by scattering in the atmosphere and absorption,” Zeilinger said. “Only about one in ten million arrive on the other side,” he added. Making detectors that can “find” the key photons among the background light is therefore a crucial part of the experiment.

The team had previously managed to detect lone members of entangled pairs sent over a 90-mile (144-kilometer) distance.

For their new research, Zeilinger and colleagues made their detectors sensitive enough to send both members of a pair and find them together at a defined location. The next step would be to send each entangled photon to a different receiver, opening the door for distant allies to send coded messages to each other via a satellite link.

According to award-winning science fiction writer and futurist Robert J. Sawyer, the biggest short-term benefit of quantum messages will be in e-commerce, where coded data transmissions are vital for theft prevention.

But, coded transmissions spanning Earth are just the beginning.

“Theoretically, entangled particles will retain their bonding regardless of how far apart they are,” Sawyer said.

Thus, they might someday be used for interstellar communications.

“A little more sophistication would allow text messages. More would allow voice or even video,” said Science fiction writer Jerry Oltion of Eugene, Oregon.

“With the right encoding, I see no reason why complex, real time messages can’t be sent via ‘spookygram’,” he added.

via Programmica: Supersecret codes that can’t be hacked.

Video Guitar Demo

So awesome.

High Definition Video from the Moon

Jet Exercises Over D.C. Planned for Wednesday

The North American Aerospace Defense Command will be conducting training exercises in the skies above Washington tomorrow to test its air defense skills.

The first, which should last from midnight to about 6 a.m., will include two Civil Air Patrol Cessnas, two Air Force F-16s and a Coast Guard helicopter. The second exercise, which runs from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. tomorrow, includes C-21 Lear 35, one C-172 Cessna and an F-16. The exercises will simulate various situations in which aircraft enter restricted air space.

The command is working in conjunction with the Federal Aviation Administration, the Coast Guard and the Transportation Security Administration.

via Jet Exercises Over D.C. Planned for Wednesday – washingtonpost.com.

For more information on the Falcon Virgo and Amalgam Arrow exercises, please contact CONR Public Affairs at 850-283-8080, or the NORAD Public Affairs Office at 719-554-6889.

via WHSV

War games are interesting, especially when our country is attacked during them.

Strange ‘Squid-like’ Lightning Spotted over France

This next picture gives you an idea how big this thing must be. A sprite is like a window opening into space through our atmosphere.

Over the weekend, an atmospheric scientist in Europe photographed something that resembled a giant luminous squid floating over a thundercloud in France. It was a strange form of lightning known as a “sprite”:

via Strange ‘Squid-like’ Lightning Spotted over France | TDG – Science, Magick, Myth and History.

NASA says:

Image: Time-elapsed photography shows sprites “dance” across the horizon. Credit: University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

For centuries, man has been transfixed by the spectacular lightning displays of thunderstorms. But after all those years of gazing at the sky, we never realized there was an equally amazing light show going on above the clouds.

In our own century, pilots reported seeing strange lights in the sky above thunderstorms. Low-light cameras on board airplanes and the Space Shuttle have recently made possible the documentation of sprites – quick red flashes of light that appear above storm clouds.

Dr. Dave Sentman of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks is one among a small group of researchers who have been studying these mysterious bursts of colored light. Although no one is sure what sprites really are or what causes them, these scientists have learned that sprites contain a great deal of energy.

“Although we’re not yet certain, we suspect that the energies from sprites may be sufficient to drive some novel chemical reactions,” said Sentman. “The region of the atmosphere where sprites appear typically doesn’t contain a lot of energy, so the energy introduced from a sprite could do some really interesting things.”

For instance, there is some speculation that sprites may create nitric oxide (NO) in the upper atmosphere. Nitric oxide destroys ozone, so sprites may have some impact on the Earth’s protective ozone layer.

… The brightness of sprites is about 500 to 1,000 kiloRayleighs. The cones in the retina, which see color, can barely perceive this light level.

Another NASA site:

Sometimes lightning occurs out near space. One such lightning type is the recently documented red sprite lightning, which has only been photographed and studied on Earth over the last few years. The origins of all types of lightning remains unknown, and scientists are even trying to figure out why red sprite lightning occurs at all. What is known is that as some large, positive cloud-to-ground lightning strokes occur, millisecond flashes appearing red may also occur far above in the upper atmosphere. Pictured above, a group of red sprites was photographed at high resolution.

From Skyfire.TV:

What is a sprite?
A sprite is a very brief, luminous glow that occurs in the middle atmosphere. Sprites often start around 45 miles high (in the mesosphere) and extend upwards to the edge of the ionosphere (around 55-60 miles) and sometimes downwards into the stratosphere below (to as low as 15-20 miles). They are primarily red in color, except for some bluish tinge in the downward extending tendrils. …

How long does a sprite last?
Sprites are very brief. The portion of the event that might be visible to the naked eye often lasts less than one hundredth of a second. When using a “night vision” camera, they are visible for longer periods, but rarely more than one tenth of a second. 

How big is a sprite?
Huge! Aside from stretching vertically for as much as 45 miles, the sprite can often be tens of miles across. Often sprite events comprise a series of individual sprites that occur in clusters stretching 50 miles or more across the sky. The entire volume of atmosphere enveloped by a sprite can cover thousands of cubic miles.

What causes sprites?
Lightning. Sprites are the result of extremely powerful lightning discharges sometimes occurring within thunderstorms. They are almost always triggered by a powerful positive cloud-to-ground (CG) flash which lowers massive amounts of electrical charge to the Earth. This momentarily increases the electric field in the middle atmosphere beyond the point of “dielectric breakdown.” In other words, a giant spark occurs, usually starting around 45 miles above the ground. Electrical streamers then race both downwards and upwards from that point. Though sprites may look rather “solid” in many images, when viewed through telescopes, many sprites are actually composed of networks of thin channels of electrical streamers. Only a very small percentage (<10%) of positive CGs actually produce sprites, and then, only in certain storms.

This one is also from France:

“It occurred in the area east of Perpignan (France) over a thunderstorm system that earlier passed at my location. This was just before the clouds covered the sky and ended the observations.” – lightningwizard

This shot taken Oct 17, 2007 near Bolivar Missouri, USA shows a sprite above a thunderstorm (see spaceweather for another still from this same video.)

Parallax plant … or alien?

To me, this creature seems to be walking behind plants that are in the background:

I do agree that you should consider the most reasonable explanations first. Here is one person’s idea of what is going on… not sure I buy it, because in the mock up they do trying to show that it is just a plant, the plant isn’t WALKING like the alien is.

A stick bug close to the camera perhaps, but not a plant.

This could be the best video of a real alien not being covered up by governments… especially when you consider the Fresno video.

What do you think?

Xeno live: 8 pm, luna’s cafe, sacramento ca, tomorrow

Xeno live: 8 pm, luna’s cafe, sacramento ca, tomorrow, originally uploaded by xeno735.

Amateur fossil collector find says humans in Florida 13,000 years ago

Treasure Coast amateur fossil collector James Kennedy appears to have made an unprecedented archaeological discovery that might help confirm a human presence here up to 13,000 years ago.

A 15-inch-long prehistoric bone fragment found near Vero Beach contains a crude engraving of a mammoth or mastodon on it, said Dr. Barbara Purdy, emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Florida.

“It is humbling to realize that we are seeing what the hunter saw more than 13,000 years ago,” Purdy said.

Tests so far have shown it to be genuine.

If so, it appears to be “the oldest, most spectacular and rare work of art in the Americas,” she wrote in a report to other scientists.

The only comparable images are found in European cave paintings, she said in an interview Friday. The bone contains “the unmistakable incising of an ancient proboscidean [elephant],” she said.

Kennedy found the brown and tan bone two years ago and put it under his sink. About two months ago, he took it out for cleaning and spotted unusual lines. He had been considering selling it at a flea market.

Instead, he showed it to a fellow collector, William Roddenberry of Vero Beach, who was amazed. They took it to the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville for examination.

When Kennedy learned it was so historically valuable, he said, “It blew me away. I was absolutely baffled.”

The etched bone is being kept in a vault. The site where it was found isn’t being disclosed.

“There could be so much more out there” from early people in Florida, he said.

The incised bone was picked up near where other collectors in 1915 apparently found ancient human bones near the bones of extinct animals, a find that launched a national scientific debate that hasn’t been settled.

via Vero Beach bone: Treasure Coast amateur fossil collector James Kennedy appears to have made an archaeological discovery that might help confirm a human presence here up to 13,000 years ago. – SFL.