New Earth-Like Planet Discovered by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope

Astronomers using NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope announced Thursday the discovery of the most Earth-like planet yet orbiting a distant star like our own sun, bringing to a dozen the number of small worlds potentially suitable for life spotted elsewhere in the galaxy.

The newly discovered planet, called Kepler-452b, is the smallest to date found orbiting in the habitable zone of a distant star—the area where the water considered essential for life could exist.

Every 385 days, the planet circles a star slightly brighter than the sun, located about 1,400 light years away in the Constellation Cygnus, the researchers said.

Interactive: From Pluto to the Sun

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Based on available data, the planet is most likely rocky, about 60% larger than Earth and about 1.5 billion years or so older, the researchers said. So far, there is no evidence that it has an atmosphere. The researchers don’t know the planet’s mass, but speculated that its gravity may be twice that on Earth.

“It is a pretty good close cousin to our Earth and our sun,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for science at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Washington, D.C. “It is the closest so far.”

The Kepler astronomers, however, have no direct evidence that the newly found planet can actually support life.

The space agency announced the find at a media briefing Thursday. A research paper reporting the conclusions has been accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal.

The discovery was found by analyzing data on about 150,000 stars collected by the $600 million planet-hunting space telescope before it malfunctioned two years ago.

To help confirm the finding, astronomers also conducted ground-based observations at the University of Texas’ McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, Texas; the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory on Mount Hopkins in Arizona; and the W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

The Kepler scientists said Thursday that they also have identified 521 new possible exoplanets, as worlds around other stars are called.

So far, the Kepler astronomers have confirmed the existence of 12 planets less than twice the size of Earth in the habitable zones of the stars they orbit.

All told, the researchers are analyzing data about 4,696 potential exoplanets and have confirmed the existence of 1,028 exoplanets of all sorts. A dozen of them appear to be between one to two times the size of Earth, and orbit in their star’s habitable zone. Of these, nine orbit stars that are similar to the sun in size and temperature, including the exoplanet announced Thursday.

“We are the breadcrumbs of the universe,” said Kepler research scientist Jeff Coughlin, from the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. “Planets like Earth do appear to be quite common.”

Oak Island Money Pit

Is there treasure deep down?

Throughout history, we’ve never ceased to be enamoured with tales of buried treasure, secret inscriptions, and booby traps. But one of the most enduring treasure mysteries of all time comes from a tiny island off the coast of Nova Scotia in eastern Canada.

Oak Island is the home of what is informally known as the “Money Pit,” an incredibly deep hole of incredibly elaborate construction discovered in 1795.

Over two centuries of excavation have unearthed no treasure thus far, but what has been discovered is arguably just as fascinating. Underneath the surface of the pit are a series of wooden platforms, and even deeper, flooding mechanisms formed from multiple underground canals leading to water.

The first time someone managed to dig deep enough, the entire pit was immediately flooded, and due to the construction of the mechanism, it would fill back up with water as fast as you could remove it. At the 90-foot mark, an inscribed, encoded stone tablet was found that was revealed to say “forty feet below, two million pounds lie beneath.”

In search for whatever the island is hiding, the money pit has attracted the attention of hundreds of search parties, including former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who in his youth spent a summer with fellow Harvard grads in search of the treasure. It’s truly a historical oddity, but considering that we’re no closer to finding out who dug the pit and why, after 200 years of searching, one must wonder if we ever will.

The WOW! signal

Aliens, are you there?

On a summer night in 1977, Jerry Ehman, a volunteer for SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, recorded the strongest hard evidence of extraterrestrial life in human history.

Ehman was scanning radio waves from deep space, as his volunteer position entailed, hoping to come across a signal that bore the hallmarks of one sent by intelligent aliens.

And on that night, he saw his measurements spike, in a big way. The signal lasted for 72 seconds, the longest period of time it could possibly be measured by the array that Ehman was using. It was unmistakable, and appeared to have originated from within the Sagittarius constellation near a star called Tau Sagittarii, 120 light years away.

Ehman wrote the words “Wow!” on the original printout of the signal, thus its being known as the “Wow! Signal.”

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If you’re wondering what the fuss is about the signal, think of it this way — the signal that was received was at precisely the right frequency that wouldn’t be interpreted as noise, and wouldn’t be intercepted along its journey.

In other words, if we were going to send a signal out into the universe to try to communicate with an alien race, that’s exactly the frequency we would use.

Despite the incredible occurrence however, all attempts to locate the signal again have failed, leading to much controversy and confusion about its origins and its meaning.

The Dancing Plague of 1518

The story of the dancing plague sounds like something straight out of fiction.

On a summer’s day in the town of Strasbourg during the year 1518, a woman began dancing wildly in the street. The day turned into night, the night turned into morning, and she was still dancing.

Within a week, 34 others had joined her, dancing as though they were possessed, without stop, for no apparent reason. And within a month, the number of dancers had reached 400. Religious sermons were called to address the issue.

Physicians were called in to document the event and try to find a solution. And all the while, the dancing worsened. Many became ill or died as a result of exhaustion, strokes, or heart attacks. The authorities eventually decided that the only way the dancers would recover is if they danced it out of their systems.

Gild halls and a grain market were opened to the dancers, and a wooden stage was even constructed for them. Musicians were even brought in to keep those affected moving. Numerous theories have been proposed for the cause of the bizarre event, including poisoning, epilepsy, typhus, mass psychogenic illness, and even secretly coordinated religious rituals, but to this day we still have no answer for this truly unbelievable historical event.

The S.S. Ourang Medan

In June 1947, multiple ships travelling trade routes in the strait of Malacca, off the coast of Malaysia, received a terrifying SOS message that read: “All officers including captain are dead lying in chart room and bridge. Possibly whole crew dead.” After a short period of time, one final message was received, that read simply ... “I die.”

Nearby ships identified the source of the signal as coming from a Dutch freighter, the SS Ourang Medan.

The nearest merchant ship, The Silver Star, travelled as fast as they could to the source of the distress signal. But upon boarding the Ourang Medan, they were horrified by what they found: Every member of the crew lay dead, their corpses scattered on the decks.

The eyes of the men were still open and expressions of sheer terror were frozen on their faces. The Silver Star’s party found the deceased radio operator as well, his hand still on the Morse Code-sending key, and eyes wide open.

But strangely, there were no signs of wounds or injuries on any of the bodies. The Silver Star’s crew decided to tow the ship back to port, but before they could get underway, smoke began emanating from the decks below.

The boarding party quickly returned to their ship and barely had time to escape before the SS Ourang Medan exploded and swiftly sank. Some theorised that clouds of noxious natural gases bubbled up from fissures in the seabed and engulfed the ship, and others have even blamed the occurrence on the supernatural, but to this day, the exact fate of the ships crew remains a mystery.

Sea Peoples

During the late Bronze Age, civilisation was progressing at an impressive rate in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean regions. Kingdoms rose, order was established, and technology advanced. The Mycenaean and Minoans had intricate palaces in Greece and Crete, the Hittites dominated what is now Turkey.

And the Canaanites controlled what would become the holy land — Israel, Lebanon, and Jordan. But in the years surrounding 1200 B.C., all of the would change.

Over the course of a single generation, all of those civilisations would be almost entirely wiped off the map, and those that did survive would be set back a thousand years, losing the ability to write and turning back the clock on the sophistication of their art, architecture, and pottery in the hundred years to follow.

This event was part of what is known as the Bronze Age collapse, and it remains one of the largest dark spots in historians’ records. And one of the causes of this bizarre collapse was the mysterious “Sea Peoples” — a technologically inferior, unaffiliated group of seafaring warriors who raided the lands and are often credited with the collapse of these once-great civilisations.

The problem is, historians still have little if any idea of where these warriors came from, or what became of them after their conquest finally ended in Egypt. Also unknown is how the Sea Peoples managed to conquer civilisations hundreds of years more advanced in weaponry.

But without solid records from the time, and with only scattered details of the origins of these strange raiders, we may never know their true identity.

FACTS ABOUT EARTH

1) 1.3 MILLION EARTHS COULD FIT INSIDE THE SUN, AN AVERAGE-SIZED STAR.

2) IF YOU DRILLED A TUNNEL STRAIGHT THROUGH THE EARTH AN JUMPED IN, IT    WOULD TAKE YOU ABOUT 42 MINUTES TO GET TO THE OTHER SIDE.

3) THE QUEEN OF THE UK IS THE LEGAL OWNER OF ONE-SIXTH OF THE EARTH'S    LAND SURFACE.

4) IT TAKES 8 MINUTES AND 20 SECONDS FOR LIGHT TO TRAVEL FROM THE SUN    TO THE EARTH.

5)THERE ARE MORE LIVING ORGANISMS IN A TEASPOONFUL OF SOIL THAN THERE   ARE PEOPLE ON EARTH.

6) BEFORE TREES WERE COMMON, THE EARTH WAS COVERED WITH GIANT    MUSHROOMS.

7) OUR GALAXY PROBABLY CONTAINS AT LEAST 2 BILLION PLANETS LIKE EARTH.

8) THERE ARE ABOUT 7500,000,000,000,000,000 GRAINS OF SAND ON EARTH.

9) THE EARTH'S CORE IS ABOUT AS HOT AS THE SUN.

10) EARTH IS THE ONLY PLACE IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM WHERE WATER CAN BE     PRESENT IN ITS THREE STATES:SOLID, LIQID AND VAPOUR.

11) THE EARTH'S DEEPEST KNOWN POINT EQUALS TO 24.5 EMPIRE STATE     BUILDING END TO END.

12) EARTH IS THE ONLY PLACE IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM WHERE A TOTAL SOLAR     ECLIPSE CAN HAPPEN.

13) THE SOVIETS DRILLED THE WORLD'S DEEPEST HOLE INTO THE EARTH FOR 14     YEARS:IT'S 12,262 METERS[40,230FT] DEEP.

14) THERE ARE ABOUT 22,000 MANMADE OBJECTS ORBITING AROUND PLANET     EARTH.

15) THERE ARE NO 24 HOURS IN A DAY. IT HAS 23 HOURS, 56 MINUTES AND 4      SECONDS, THE TIME IT TAKES THE EARTH TO ROTATE ON ITS AXIS.

16) THERE IS ENOUGH GOLD IN EARTH'S CORE TO COAT ITS ENTIRE SURFACE TO     A DEPTH OF 1.5 FEET.

17) IF THE EARTH DIDN'T HAVE THE MOON, OUR DAYS WOULD ONLY BE 6 HOURS     LONG.

18) 20% OF THE EARTH'S OXYGEN IS PRODUCED BY THE AMAZON RAINFOREST.

19) FOSSIL EVIDENCE SUGGESTS THAT FISH HAVE BEEN ON EARTH FOR ABOUT     530 MILLION YEARS.

20) THE 2011 EARTHQUAKE NEAR JAPAN INCREASED THE EARTH'S ROTATION         SPEED, SHORTENING THE DAY BY 1.8 MICROSECONDS.

21) RAINBOWS ARE ACTUALLY CIRCULAR. WE DON'T TYPICALLY SEE A FULL     CIRCLE RAINBOW BECAUSE THE EARTH'S HORIZON BLOCKS THE LOWER PART.

Worlds luckiest unlucky man – Cheats death 7 times and win the lottery

Worlds luckiest unlucky man, Frano Selak, cheated death for years upon years and survived weird accidents. five years ago this Croatian man won €600,000 – only to dispose of it later on claiming “No amount of money buy happiness.”

Frano Salek, an 81 years old music teacher, is known to be the worlds luckiest unlucky man in the world, after avoiding death 7 times. 5 years ago he won  the highest lottery prize in Croatia – €600,000 although recently he decided to get rid of his fortune claiming no amount of money can buy him happiness or love.

Selak sold his luxurious mansion he had on a private island, and divided his fortune amongst his friends and family. He moved back to his little house in the village of Zegrab. Using his left over money he is going to fix his hip bone with the help of surgery so he could comfortably live the rest of his life with his beloved wife. in the future he is also planning to build a little shrine for virgin Mary, who according to him is responsible for his luck.

According to the British ‘Telegraph’, Selak survived 7 deadly accidents. A train he was riding de-railed into a frozen river – 17 of the passengers died, but Selak survived with minor fractures and bruises. A year later a door on a plane he was on detached – 19 passengers were sucked out of the airplane, including Selak who landed on a big pile of hay and survived.

In 1996 a bus he was on lost control into a river, 4 passengers drowned, but as expected – Selak managed to swim to shore. In 1970 – Selak car caught fire while driving high speed, but he got out of that car without any harm. In 1973 he lost his hair in a car accident fire, in 1995 a bus hit him – but this time leaving with almost no injuries.
The last accident happened in 1996 when a UN truck almost hit him on a mountain curve.

Genius Hacks For Your MIND That Will Get You Ahead In Life

It wouldn’t hurt us to learn a few tricks and hacks for your mind so we can handle ourselves better out there, As we know – we are very influenced by the way other people treat us, even more than the things they actually say to us. The brain is a deceiving organ and can be manipulated by different kinds of manipulations.

These Tips can help you be one step ahead, It’s always good to know their effect and at the same time – not fall to other’s tricks, And remember: It’s all in your head.

1. When you first meet a new person, Try identifying the color of his eyes while smiling. Give him a long deep look. Maybe because this act takes one second longer than usual – people react enthusiastically.

2. Notice the feet location, If you approach two people who are in the middle of a conversation and their legs point to the opposite direction of you – might mean that they are not really interested in you, and probably don’t want to share the conversation.

3. “Stomping” technique. People will tend to do missions for you if you gave them an easier mission beforehand. This psychology is strong with salesmen. If they convinced you to admit something (like your affection for dogs) – than everything they offer you from now on will be about dogs.

4. Ask a person to do an impossible job for you and he would probably say “no”. THEN ask him for what you really wanted. He would probably say “yes” out of inconvenience from the last answer to your request.

5. If you convince a person to do a little favour for you he would get himself in a state of cognitive dissonance, he would solve this by feeling that he actually liked you and that is why he did what he did.

6. If a person answers unsurly or in parts to your question, don’t interrupt him. Wait a few seconds in silence and keep looking into his eyes. He will probably keep talking, answer your questions and will appreciate the gesture.

7. Chew bubblegum in stressful times. For example, if you are about to take a speech in front of a large audience, chew some bubblegum (don’t forget to take it out before the speech). As it turns out – our brain feels totally unthreatened while chewing gum.

8. When you learn something new, Explain the new material to a friend of yours or any other people around. If you teach it properly – there is a good change you really understood it yourself.

9. People will remember how you made them feel and not what you said.

10. Always stay calm when someone is yelling at you. Most of the chances are that the person in front of you will freak out even more, and even apologize for his behaviour when he is done.

11. Before an important date take them to an exciting place, like an amusement park, so the adrenaline will flow. Their heart will beat hard and they will feel excited from the whole thing – resulting in them saying how much fun they are having with you. They will throw the enjoyment from the occasion on you.

12. A good way for self-confidence is to walk into a room and imagine everyone in it already love you.

13. If you are having problems remembering new names, Here is a working trick: When someone introduce himself to you, say “nice to meet you” and repeat his name. When you repeat his name it will help it be “saved” better in your brain. Besides, people like to be addressed by their first name.

14. Always give your child an option. This will make him feel like he is in control.

15. People are very aware to their physical touch. If someones “accidently” put his knee besides yours – he definitely knows its there.

16. Want to make friends with your boss? Prepare him some coffee and have a conversation with him while he sips from it. The hot beverage will make him feel you are also a nice cosy individual.

17. Want to earn the appreciation of your spouse or parents? Talk good and praise a character they admire from any kind of field. When you do this, the other person attach all of that good to you as well.

18. Curse. This is a good tip for salesmen but not just for them. When you sell something to someone cursing might show them that you are very enthusiastic about it, people will feel better and connect to your enthusiasm and might believe you.

19. Talk fast. When we talk fast it might actually help us sell whatever we want. People believe what will come out of your mouth. Someone who talks fast seems more intelligent and as if he knows what he is talking about.

20. Adjust yourself to the person in front of you to develop empathy. People likes to see themselves everywhere, so give them a “mirror” and they will like you more.

Fascinating dream facts

We all dream, even from the time of being in the womb of our mothers, most of us experienced a dream of floating or flying – but apparently with no special meaning. What do you know about the dreams that visit you every night? Here are some fascinating dream facts!

We experience them every night and unlike the bible stories – dreams as we know them today do not exist to predict the future, but play an important rule inside the brain, its development and information processing received during a day. Just before you close your eyes again and sink into a magical important world, Here are 9 fascinating dream facts you should read about:

1. The man who lived without dreaming

A ricochet that hit Yuval’s head at war confused sleep doctor all over the world. Up until 1982 it was clear for everyone – you can not live without sleeping and dreaming. Researches conducted on rats and cats, where the dream stage was deprived of them, killed them within a few weeks. These researches left no doubt amongst the doctors, The dream stage is extremely important for life continuation. But from the moment Yuval was injured and until these days – his sleep does not have any dreams. He was checked by professors and it seemed the ricochet hit a part of his brain stem called ‘Pons’ which is responsible for the REM (dreaming) stage. They figured that without dreaming he will develop severe memory problems – but up until today Yuval is a successful lawyer, a painter and live a full happy life even without dreams.

2. Dreams in the womb

The importance of a dream can be seen at infancy. babies spend 70% of the day sleeping and 50% of that time dreaming. Considering their first years are dedicated to accelerated development of learning and studying, It seems dreaming has an important role in brain development.

3. 90 minutes of dreaming

We spend about a third of our life time sleeping. Every night there would be approximately 5 dreams, concluding in one and a half hours.

4. Awake while dreaming

The paradoxical part of dreaming, also called REM is pretty weird. While in most of the sleeping parts it seems the body is slowing down, resting and slowing down brain waves, while dreaming the brain waves function almost as much as while being awake! The pulse and breathing accelerate while the body’s muscles stay paralyzed.

5. Chaotic world with no sense

Unlike everyday thinking, the dream doesn’t have any logic: It can be in one place at one moment and all of a sudden on the moon seeing the face of someone else.

Who needs this chaos? one of the main claims on the subject is that we need that to re-organize our memory. While dreaming the brain “puts everything on the table” and organize it all. Researches show that people with sleep deprivation has worse brain function and memory compared to those who sleep and dream.

6. Falling and floating

You’ve probably had a dream where you float or fly. researches show that this phenomenon happens with all cultures races and genders. This is one of the most common dreams, but apparently has no specific important symbolism. Dreaming about floating or flying probably has to do with the psychological change the body goes when going into the dream stage, from tensed muscles while awake to relaxation of the body while having sleep paralysis (dreaming).

7. Mapped brain

The development of the new MRI scanning device managed to bring us to a breakthrough on understanding what is going on in the brain while dreaming. We could monitor blood flow in certain parts of the brain, this way the researchers managed to see that the working parts while dreaming are the Hippocampus that has to do with memory and the Amygdala that has to do with emotions and the bridge in the brain stem.

8. Past and present all mixed up

Although we were successful in mapping the brain while dreaming, there are still many questions to be asked about this complicated mechanism. Apparently the dream takes information from the memory bank that are found on timeline and pastes them in a weird sequence. Dream elements will be taken from the same day, a week before or even 10 days before. This means that if you meet a person in NY – you might dream about him only after 10 days, in a different set and timeline.

9. Most common dreams:

• Failure in a school test, high school or even university
• Appearing nude in public
• Flying an airplane or crashing
• Floating
• Paralysis or movement blockage – like trying to run away from someone or something
• Kidnapped by people, animals or creatures
• Sexual experiences
• Nature disasters
• Losing teeth
• Violence on yourself or others
• Being abandoned or humiliated
• Missing a bus, a train or an airplane
• Finding hidden rooms in a building
• Finding or losing money
• People from your past or present
• Pregnancy and childbirth
• Meeting with unfamiliar people and unfamiliar situations

An individual blood cell takes about 60 seconds to make a complete circuit of the body

You have about 5 litres of blood in your body (at least most people do) and the average heart pumps about 70 ml of blood out with each beat. Also, a healthy heart beats around 70 times a minute. So, if you multiply the amount of blood that the heart can pump by the number of beats in a minute, you actually get about 4.9 litres of blood, which is almost your whole body’s worth of blood. In just a minute, the hearts pumps the entire blood volume around your body.

The average person walks the equivalent of five times around the world in a lifetime

The average moderately active person take aound 7,500 step/day.  If you maintain that daily average and live until 80 years of age, you’ll have walked about 216,262,500 steps in your lifetime. Doing the math;  the average person with the average stride living until 80 will walk a distance of around 110,000 miles.  Which is the equivalent of walking about 5 times around the Earth, right on the equator. 

It can take a photon 40,000 years to travel from the core of the sun to its surface, but only 8 minutes to travel the rest of the way to Earth

A photon travels, on average, a particular distance, d, before being briefly absorbed and released by an atom, which scatters it in a new random direction.From the core to the sun’s surface (696,000 kilometers) where it can escape into space, a photon needs to make a huge number of drunken jumps. The calculation is a little tricky, but the conclusion is that a photon takes between many thousands and many millions of years to drunkenly wander to the surface of the Sun. In a way, the light that reaches us today is energy produced maybe millions of years ago. Amazing!

There is enough DNA in an average person’s body to stretch from the sun to Pluto and back. 17 times

The human genome, the genetic code in each human cell, contains 23 DNA molecules each containing from 500 thousand to 2.5 million nucleotide pairs. DNA molecules of this size are 1.7 to 8.5 cm long when uncoiled, or about 5 cm on average. There are about 37 trillion cells in the human body and if you’d uncoil all of the DNA encased in each cell and put them end to end, then these would sum to a total length of 2×1014 meters or enough for 17 Pluto roundtrips (1.2×1013meters/Pluto roundtrip).

6 Incredibly Deep Holes From Around The World

Out of every geological feature on earth, none make you more aware that you are just a speck on a rock that is floating in dark nothingness like a giant hole that burrows to the center of the planet.

These holes were created in various ways (both naturally and by man), but every one looks like a blasted gateway to hell. Here are some of the deepest holes on the planet.

1. Dean's Blue Hole, Long Island, Bahamas - 660 ft deep.

A "blue hole" is a large hole whose entrance is below sea level. This one in particular is the deepest saltwater blue hole in the world. It's almost twice the depth of most others. (There's no word on who Dean is and why he made such a horrifyingly big hole in the planet, though.)

2. Mount Baldy Sink Hole, Indiana - 11 feet deep.

These weird, Sarlacc-pit-looking sink holes are starting to appear around the Mount Baldy Sand Dune near Lake Michigan. One sink hole even swallowed a child in 2011. Luckily, after three hours, he was dug out of the pit (otherwise he surely would have met the same fate as Boba Fett).

3. Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory Hole (1 of 86) - 1.5 miles deep.

These holes were dug using heated pipes that were jammed into a frozen hellscape. They are used by researchers to observe the elusive neutrinos through the South Pole Telescope.

4. Great Blue Hole, Belize - 407 ft deep.

This hole was made famous by Jacques Cousteau, who said it was one of the top scuba diving sites in the world. You can take a tour and dive in, if you're not scared of giant, Pacific Rim monster-aliens from another dimension portaling through.

5. Glory Hole, Monticello Dam, California - 304 ft deep.

This man-made dam with a fairly provocative name can drain approximately 48,000 cubic feet of water per second. I can barely get myself to drink 3 cups of water a day.

6. 2010 Guatemala City Sinkhole - 100 ft deep.

Ok, this one might actually be a wormhole to the underworld. In 2010, the mysterious sinkhole blew through Guatemala City's Zona 2, swallowing a three-story building whole.

Well, if you ever needed proof that this planet is a dying sphere that will eventually eat us all, just take a look at these terrifying holes.