What is believed to be the only sculpture in the world created to scale in meticulous detail of an adult specimen of the legendary "Bigfoot" resides in this Ozark town "It took three months to get it from my head to his (the sculptor's) head," said Clifford LaBrecque, 73, of the fiberglass-and-fur model of Bigfoot he commissioned in 1976 at a cost then of $9,000. "It's accurate to the inch," LaBrecque says. The striking model of Bigfoot stands 8 feet tall in the dining room of LaBrecque's home. He says it depicts accurately what LaBrecque remembers from sightings and a physical encounter with a Bigfoot specimen on June 18, 1977, and from many descriptions of the creature prior to his experience. The encounter happened, according to LaBrecque,...

The most complete and best preserved ancient example of the Ten Commandments, a 2,000 year old leather parchment scroll discovered in a cave at the Dead Sea in 1952, will go on display on Friday in New York's Discovery Times Square Exposition. The scroll is an important, although brief, addition to the show "Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Biblical Times." The largest collection of biblical artifacts ever displayed outside Israel, the exhibit, which opened October 28 and will run through April 15, is already featuring 20 Dead Sea Scrolls, with sections from the biblical books of Genesis, Psalms, Exodus, Isaiah, and others. The Ten Commandments scroll will be added to the show from Dec. 16 through Jan. 2. Dating from 50 BCE to 1 BCE, the scroll was found in Cave 4, one of...

Researchers have spotted a giant gas cloud spiralling into the supermassive black hole at our galaxy's centre. Though it is known that black holes draw in nearby material, it will be the first chance to see one consume such a cloud. As it is torn apart, the turbulent area around the black hole will become unusually bright, giving astronomers a chance to learn more about it. An article in Nature suggests the spectacle should be visible in 2013. Researchers using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope estimate that despite its size, the cloud has a total mass of only about three times that of Earth. They have plotted the cloud's squashed, oval-shaped path and estimate it has doubled its speed in the last seven years - to 2,350km per second. It should spiral in...

Within decades, solar storms are likely to become more disruptive to planes and spacecraft, say researchers at Reading University. The work, published in Geophysical Research Letters, predicts that once the Sun shifts towards an era of lower solar activity, more hazardous radiation will reach Earth. The team says the Sun is currently at a grand solar maximum. This phase began in the 1920s - and has lasted throughout the space age. Mike Lockwood, professor of space environment physics at Reading, said: "All the evidence suggests that the Sun will shortly exit from a grand solar maximum that has persisted since before the start of the space age. "In a grand solar maximum, the peaks of the 11-year sunspot cycle are larger and the average number of solar flares and associated events...

I'm fed up. Yet again, a few days ago, someone told me they saw a UFO in the early morning sky and immediately assumed it is unquestionable evidence that aliens exist and that they are visiting Planet Earth, raping and pillaging the locals! After a big sigh, and a little sly questioning on my part, we discover they had witnessed nothing more than Venus rising in the dawn sky and the flashing lights were the distorting effect of the atmosphere. A few months ago, at our street party celebration for the Royal Wedding, I convinced the neighbors to launch some Chinese lanterns. It turned out that the fleet of orange lights floating silently across the sky was mistaken by an alarming number of residents nearby as a whole invasion from bog-eyed monsters! I mean, really... There seems...

13 billion light-years away, at the very edge of our observable universe, supermassive black holes lurk inside their galactic hosts, feeding. As the light took 13 billion years to reach us, these black holes actually evolved when the Universe was only a fraction of the age it is now -- precisely 13.75 billion years old. This new finding comes from the analysis of Chandra X-Ray Observatory data, where astronomers "stacked" images of 250 distant candidate galaxies as previously spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope. The stacking process allowed extremely faint X-ray emissions from the centers of the galaxies to multiply, highlighting the location of the black holes living in their cores, feeding off dust, gas and unfortunate stars. This is a significant finding as black holes are...

The notorious pirate Blackbeard used improvised weapons and missiles to terrorize the seas from Virginia to the Caribbean in the early 18th century, an exploration of the ocean floor off the North Carolina coast has revealed. Aimed at recovering a 1.4-ton (3,000-lb) anchor, the two-week expedition on what is believed to be the wreck of Blackbeard's flagship Queen Anne's Revenge, also produced new evidence about the pirate's terror tactics. As they explored the site, archaeologists from North Carolina's Department of Cultural Resources noticed three metallic clusters which covered a 5-by 3-foot-square area on the sea bed. "The three conglomerates consist mostly of lead shot, nails, and glass which we suspect were put in canvas bags and fired from the cannons,"...

An Italian art expert has claimed that the 'Shroud of Turin' known to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ is a fake copy created by famous artist Giotto. According to Luciano Buso, the 14 ft length of fabric, which bears a faint image of a bearded man and appears to be stained by blood is a copy of the original one which deteriorated and was lost. He explained that several veiled appearances of the number 15, hidden in the fabric by the artist, indicated that Giotto created the Shroud in 1315. His claims further coincide with the 1980's carbon dating, which puts the Shroud's origin in the early 14th century. "He wasn't trying to fake anything, which is clear from the fact that he signed it "Giotto 15", to authenticate it as his own work from 1315. This...

A south Wales engineering company is using 21st Century technology, including air bags, to help preserve one of Egypt's most imposing landmarks, dating back to 2,700 BC. The Pyramid of Djoser is Egypt's oldest step-built pyramid. But it was at risk of collapse after an earthquake in 1992. Newport specialist engineers Cintec, who have previously provided solutions to structural problems at landmarks such as the White House and Windsor Castle, were set the task of helping it last another 4,700 years. The team has now completed phase one of the work at the site at Saqqara, south west of Cairo. It involved using pressurised air-filled bags, in order to hold up the roof of the 60m high pyramid, while more permanent repairs are carried out. However managing director of Cintec, Peter...

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, our nearest star put on a show that won't be forgotten for a long, long time. Under the ever-watchful eyes of an armada of solar observatories, the sun unleashed an M2-class solar flare. Keep in mind that an M2 flare, although powerful, is still only classed as a "medium" explosion. But there was nothing medium about this event. Erupting from an active region of sunspots (sunspot complex 1226-1227) -- where highly stressed and concentrated magnetic fields are forced through the solar surface (the "photosphere"), pushing the hot plasma aside, exposing the cooler plasma below the surface -- the flare ejected a huge coronal mass ejection (CME). A surprisingly large quantity of plasma didn't escape the gravitational pull of...