science

Original photo of Amundsen’s trip to South Pole found

Julien — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:05:25 +0200

On December 14, 1911, an expedition led by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first ever to reach the South Pole. The sole existing image of the historic moment shows four of the group’s members standing in front of a tent and the Norwegian flag.

Almost 98 years later, the only original copy of that image has been found by a historian at the National Library of Australia. Harald Ostgaard Lund, also a native of Norway, saw the photo on the library’s website and instantly recognised it. A trip to Canberra confirmed his hunch. He had already seen several cropped and manipulated photos of the landmark event, but this one was an original print.

Why Australia? On his way back from Antarctica, the Norwegian explorer stopped in Tasmania, where he gave his negatives to a local photographer. Decades later, the National Library of Australia bought an album of pictures from the family of that photographer’s assistant. Among the images was the one celebrating Amundsen’s achievement.

'Gollum-like' creature found in Panama

Team Observers — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:42:20 +0200

Last week a group of teenagers from the town of Cerro Azul in Panama claimed to have come across this unidentified creature as they were playing near a lake. Hoax or X-file?

The frightened youths say they threw stones at the creature, then ran away. They later returned, with their parents, and found it lying dead.

A fœtus, an alien or Gollum from the Lord of the Rings? The Web is abuzz with endless speculation, including the wildest theories. Meanwhile, experts are examining the images to try to identify the strange being.

Update on September 22, 2009 : FRANCE 24 contacted the National Environmental Agency of Panama (ANAM), in charge of the examination. They found that the creature was in fact the decomposing body of a dead sloth, which lost its fur as a result of rotting in the water for too long. The teenager's account of throwing stones at a live animal and returning to find it dead was presumably a hoax. Reports of it being a huge sloth foetus were untrue.

The "Mongolian Death Worm", fact or fantasy?

Sophie Team Observers — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:37:55 +0200

Representation of the creature by Takeshi Yamada.

The Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot might not really exist, but the "Mongolian Death Worm" is real, according to a cryptozoologist in the UK.

Whether indeed real or a figment of collective imagination, the Olgoï-Khorkhoï, or Mongolian Death Worm, is something that cryptozoologists can't get enough of. Its Mongolian name literally means "intestine worm", but not because it lives in the intestines - it just looks like one. According to legend, the 1.5 metre long creature lives in the Gobi desert where it feeds on rodents. Not only though; if the worm is really hungry it can kill a camel - or a human - with two spits of its highly venomous poison...

The man who predicted the quake - conman or visionary?

Julien — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:58:22 +0200

An Italian scientist had warned a month ago that a devastating earthquake was about to rock the area around L’Aquila, in central Italy, where over 170 people perished in their sleep on Monday morning. At the time, the authorities rebuffed him for scaremongering. Today, he says he is owed an apology.

A few weeks ago, vans equipped with megaphones drove up and down the streets of L’Aquila urging local residents to evacuate the area. The vehicles had been dispatched by Giampaolo Giuliani, a scientist at Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics, in the Abruzzi region. A flurry of earth tremors in mid-January had convinced Giuliani that a massive earthquake was about to strike the area. At the time, the dire forecast allegedly earned him a threat of criminal charges from the city’s mayor.

Now, Giuliani says his detractors owe him an apology. Yet, Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics remains unimpressed. Following the catastrophe, its statement simply read: “It is impossible to predict an earthquake”.

Also read the account from our Observer in L'Aquila, Paolo Busi.

The earth seen from a helium balloon

Sophie Team Observers — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:43:52 +0100

Using only a helium balloon and a simple digital camera, a group of Spanish students have managed to take photos of the Earth, from 30,000 metres away.

The four creators behind the project, students at the IES La Bisbal School in Catalonia, are between 18 and 19-years-old. Their helium balloon cost them 80 euros and their digital camera (see below) couldn't be more basic. The balloon was sent to an altitude of 30,000 metres. Once it reached that point, it deflated and fell back to earth, touching down just a dozen kilometres from where it took off.

The man who foresaw the Internet…in 1934

Team Observers — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:10:05 +0200

Sixty years before it revolutionized the world, Belgium's very own mad professor, Paul Otlet, envisioned a data exchange system that bore an uncanny resemblance to the Internet.

Extract from a documentary about Otlet's vision: