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Astronaut Edgar Mitchell Claims Alien Cover-up

Dr. Edgar Mitchell is a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission and he was the sixth man to walk on the Moon. Dr. Mitchell also insists that aliens have visited Earth and that governments are actively covering it up. "I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we've been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomena is real," Dr Mitchell said. "It's been well covered up by all our governments for the last 60 years or so, but slowly it's leaked out and some of us have been privileged to have been briefed on some of it. "I've been in military and intelligence circles, who know that beneath the surface of what has been public knowledge, yes - we have been visited. Reading the papers recently, it's been happening quite a bit." Dr Mitchell, who has a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering and a Doctor of Science degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics claimed Roswell was real and similar alien visits continue to be investigated. He told the astonished Kerrang! radio host Nick Margerrison: "This is really starting to open up. I think we're headed for real disclosure and some serious organisations are moving in that direction." NASA issued a quick denial. In a statement, a spokesman said: "NASA does not track UFOs. NASA is not involved in any sort of cover up about alien life on this planet or anywhere in the universe. "Dr Mitchell is a great American, but we do not share his opinions on this issue." If Dr. Mitchell is correct about a cover-up than this is exactly the type of denial one would expect NASA to make. You can listen to the interview with Dr. Mitchell where he discusses the UFO phenomena here. Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds Read more…

Physicists Use Supercomputers, Disused PCs To Catalog Mineral Designs

19.12.2006 04:06 Science - Source: ScienceDaily Headlines

A room's design helps define how people interact inside it, and it's much the same in the molecular world. The atomic layout of molecular spaces can provoke very different reactions from chemicals that meet there, in much the way that an intimate bistro and a bustling cafeteria might evoke different interactions among dinners.

One class of substances that chemists often tap for these spatially unique properties are zeolites, silicate minerals with a porous, Swiss-cheese-like structure. For decades, chemists have relied on zeolites to catalyze chemical reactions on an industrial scale. They are used to make everything from gasoline and asphalt to laundry detergent and aquarium filters.

So useful are zeolites that scientists have sought for decades to improve upon Mother Nature's ability to make them. In the past 50 years, the catalog of naturally occurring zeolites -- there are about 50 of them -- has been bolstered to approximately 180 with the addition of synthetic varieties, minerals whose architecture was found to be, much like a building's, suitable for a particular purpose.

Today, Rice University physicist Michael Deem is taking zeolite design into the 21st Century, using a combination of supercomputers at the University of Texas at Austin and disused computing cycles from more than 4,300 idling desktop PCs at Purdue University to painstakingly calculate many conceivable atomic formulations for zeolites.

Deem's zeolite database contained 3.4 million structures in early December, and it's still growing. By studying the catalog, scientists might find structures that are more efficient, either in terms of energy inputs or in waste byproducts.

"We're working with a major oil company to look at the structures in hopes of finding new catalysts for chemical and petrochemical applications," said Deem, the John W. Cox Professor in Biochemical and Genetic Engineering and professor of physics and astronomy.

In the current project, Deem and former postdoctoral researcher David Earl, now an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh, worked with experts from the UT's Texas Advanced Computing Center and Purdue's Rosen Center for Advanced Computing to run computer simulations on multiple TeraGrid supercomputing systems, including systems at TACC, Purdue, Argonne National Labs, National Center for Supercomputing Applications and San Diego Supercomputing Center. The NSF-funded TeraGrid is the world's largest, most comprehensive distributed cyberinfrastructure for open scientific research.

Deem and Earl were able to harness the distributed, heterogeneous computing resources on the TeraGrid network into a single virtual environment for their simulations.

"This project could not have been accomplished in a one- to three-year time frame without the TeraGrid," Deem said.

For more information about database, visit http://www.mwdeem.rice.edu/zefsaII/.