Author Archives: Lynn Voedisch

Fantastic World

Quick! When you think about a Tyrannosaurus rex, what comes to mind? Gaping jaws, jagged teeth, and the ability to run you down for a speedy snack.

Well, some of them were predatory like that—certainly they were kings of the dinosaur world—but scientists are saying that many in the tyrannosaur class, including juvenile tyrannosaurus rexes and velociraptor, got by by scavenging. Scientists from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, used such unusual tools as “Sims”-like computer games to gauge how often the dinos went after their prey or ate the carcass of a previous kill.

Rather than being like the fierce, voracious dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park,” the new research shows that many of the tyrannosaur class were more like scaly, featured hyenas. Irish and Scottish researchers  have shown that scavenging would have been a rewarding strategy for carnivorous dinosaurs.

Lots of today’s predators rely on scavenging to supplement their caught dinners. Lions scavenge nearly 50% of their food in some populations.

The scientists say that direct hunting uses up vast amounts of energy and scavenging is nearly food for free. Dino’s who mostly scavenged were dilophosaurus and Utahraptor.

“In effect, these species occupied a Goldilocks zone,” Dr. Kevin Healy of Trinity’s School of Natural Sciences told
EurekaAlert, a science website. “They were big enough to search large areas in order to find carcasses and defend them, but not so large that simply moving became too energetically costly.”

But the scientists agree that the dinosaurs could not have lived by scavenging alone. “Practically all species (ing this class) would have likely shown predatory behavior,” Healy said.

So, it’s still not safe, if they clone a t-rex, to go near it for a pet.

Fantastic World

Using lidor, a sophisticated remote sensing technology that is similar to radar, an international team of archeologist headed by the University of Sydney’s Dr. Damian Evans, uncovered a hidden city around the Cambodian temple of Angkor Wat. In what is now a dense jungle, the lidor (which they used by flying over the area in helicopters) uncovered roads, temples and even a hydraulic water system that once sustained a city that was the greatest medieval complex in the world.

At its peak in the 12th century, the city of Angkor covered 1,000 square kilometers. London only reached that size 700 years later.
Angkor was the capital of the Khmer empire, which encompassed all of present-day Cambodia and much of Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar. The city of Angkor had about a million residents.

      The largest structure of Angkor is Angkor Wat, which is still uncovered and attracts millions of visitors a year. Angkor Wat covers an area four times larger than the Vatican.

The hydraulic water system, which emerged as the most staggering achievement of this ancient culture, harness monsoon waters in  complex network of canals and reservoirs. The harvested water provided food security for the residents of the city, and made the city’s noble class fabulously wealthy. They used this wealth to build some of the most amazing temples on earth. One temple contained so much gold that its value to day would have been $3.3 billion.

Disaster struck for the Khmer empire when they paid more attention to building temples than to maintaining the hydraulic network. And just like in some modern cities, when the infrastructure crumbled, the populace suffered. Eventually, large climate shifts across southeast Asia brought the city down. Tree ring samples recorded sudden fluctuations between dry and wet conditions. Lidar maps show a huge flood that must have overcome the city’s water network.

Fantastic World

Many of the people think “the truth is out there” about extra-terrestrials and alien spacecraft (and I consider myself on the fence on this issue). They are deciding to do something about the long history of government denials and possible cover-ups. They plan to build an E.T.-catcher of sorts—a satellite that will capture information and images that suggest alien spaceship behavior. The CubeSat for Disclosure, which is still awaiting crowdfunding for its $50,000 budget, will beam information to local citizens and bypass government bodies.

Dave Cote, the prime mover behind the CubeSat project, is a Canadian who is sick of listening to government denials of E.T.s that have been reported by various believable sources.

“We have former astronauts, military personnel, police officers, and the former defense minister of Canada come forward stating that extraterrestrial UFOs are real, and that we are being visited,” Cote said in a press release. “How can this be ignored or brushed off as nonsense?”
video of CubeSat (warning, this is long)
He says the CubeSat will be put into low orbit and use infrared, electromagnetic and radiation sensors, as well as two cameras set to photograph at 360 degrees.

“Maybe we’ll get data readings and pictures of solar-flared-caused auroras; maybe we’ll capture images of some very interesting meteors; and maybe, we’ll actually capture a verifiable craft,” Cote said. “All we can do is try, and by doing this our way, we can open-source the data to you, the individuals.”

The nano-satellite will have an orbital lifespan of about three months before it burns up on reentry, so Cote better get a lot of data in a short amount of time.

The government of any country will not be able to hide the data, he told the Huffington Post.

“This is all ours,” he told the news service.

It’s certainly worth a try because the U.S. government has been notorious in refusing to release information on cited UFOs, leading to such cult groups as believers in the recently revived “The X-Files.” The authorites can’t say everyone who’s seen an odd craft in the sky is crazy. Whether they’ve seen evidence of extraterrestrial life is another, arguable subject.