A frozen ring could finally solve the mystery of Oak Island. But this ring is no precious gem - it's a mass of frozen dirt. That's the premise of a plan devised by two geotechnical engineers intent on determining once and for all whether there's buried treasure on the 56-hectare island. "This is a good plan with a high chance of success in solving the mystery," said Les MacPhie, vice-president of SNC Lavalin subsidiary Geocon, of Montreal. It's been more than two centuries since pick and shovel were first used in a bid to unearth any secrets buried deep below the surface of the Lunenburg County island. There has never been any concrete evidence of treasure but there have always been enough tantalizing discoveries to keep treasure hunters intrigued. Mr....

It is dawn on Midsummer morning and I am standing in the Neolithic temple that today cohabits with the village of Avebury in Wiltshire. Like hundreds of other like-minded souls, I have come to watch the sun rise over Avebury's famous stone circles. Swathed in blankets and huddled together in groups, we are hard to unite under a single banner, for we come from all walks of life. After a night during which we were entertained by fire dancers, the first rays of the sun are greeted with the sound of drumming as arms are raised to the east to salute the summer solstice. Dawn has broken on the longest day; it has also broken on the distinctive swirling marks of a crop circle on Waden Hill above the Kennet stone avenue that leads away to the south from the central Avebury henge. As in...

The Cornish landscape is saturated in mystery - and Cheryl Straffon's latest book, Megalithic Mysteries Of Cornwall, underlines that fact. This is a well-researched publication, with 85 pages packed with fascinating facts and theories, plus more than 40 black and white photographs. The author has gone to some impeccable sources, among them Paul Broadhurst, Hamish Miller, Craig Weatherhill, Paul Devereux, Janet Bord and Sabine Baring-Gould. Early on, she guides us over an impressive ley line, six and a half miles long, across the northern moors of West Penwith, incorporating atmospheric locations like the Tregeseal Stone Circle, West Lanyon Quoit, a ruined megalithic structure that would have been the same kind as Lanyon and Chun quoits, and the Mulfra courtyard house...

While the Opportunity rover makes what could be a one-way journey into a crater on Mars, Spirit has found salty clues to a history of water on the other side of the planet. Opportunity, which is roaming in Meridiani Planum, found evidence of a salty sea. Mineral evidence in Spirit's home, 100-mile-wide Gusev Crater, suggests that water once percolated through the soil, leaving salts behind. "This is clear evidence that water has played a role, but not evidence for a big lake or anything like that," principal investigator Steve Squyres of Cornell University said Tuesday. A lake might have come earlier in Gusev's history. The Columbia Hills, which Spirit is about to explore, could hold more clues. Engineers still are figuring out how to attack the hills, with their...

Astronomers have found what appears to be a black hole 25 to 40 times the mass of our sun, a weight class not previously known to exist. Black holes can't be seen, because any light that enters them is trapped. So to find black holes, scientists look for intense radiation from around them as well as their gravitational effects on nearby gas and stars. Black holes come in two distinct varieties, scientists know. A stellar black hole results from the collapse of a single, massive star and is typically a few times the mass of the sun. Supermassive black holes anchor the centers of many galaxies and can harbor millions or billions of solar masses. "There's a big gap there," said Philip Kaaret of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Kaaret thinks he's...

Launched in 1990, the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope has captured the public imagination by beaming back unprecedented images of countless astronomical wonders. Left alone, however, the Hubble's battery and gyroscopes will likely fade by 2007, making the telescope useless. After much public outcry over the telescope's planned demise, NASA is now considering a space shuttle-based or robotic tune-up mission. Perhaps even more important, the U.S. space agency has something much more impressive up its sleeve: the next major space telescope, already in the early stages of construction. Scheduled for launch in 2011, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) could be powerful enough to "see" objects 400 times fainter than those visible with Earth-based...

A MODERN Christian "crusade" led by American television evangelist Benny Hinn, a self-professed miracle-worker and faith healer, will be unleashed on Brisbane later this month. More than 30,000 believers hoping for some kind of healing of body, mind or spirit, are expected to raise the roof of the Brisbane Entertainment Centre for two shows – sandwiched between shows in Chicago and Ohio – on June 25 and 26. They are his only shows in Australia. Apart from those watching television during the vampire hours, relatively few Australians know of Hinn although his Orlando Christian Centre ministry, founded two decades ago, earns up to $100 million a year and is said to have a weekly world TV audience of more than 50 million. In the US "disbelievers" have...

Blood-curdling screams, strange voices and footsteps still terrify soldiers on guard during the late-night "ghost shift" at the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town. The explanation, they are convinced, lies in the bloody history of the castle and the restless spirits of those tortured there centuries ago. To this day, soldiers who guard the castle would rather walk all the way around the outside of the building than pass through the haunted archways in the early hours of the morning. The castle was the centre of civilian, administrative and military activity at the Cape for about 150 years and also the site of gruesome punishments, torture and executions, so it is not surprising that stories abound about ghosts haunting its corridors. The castle is on Cape Town's ghost...

Unknown objects in the sky have been the subject of wonder and fear throughout history. Some believe that stories in the Bible refer to close encounters. In World War Two they were called Foo fighters, mysterious lights that followed aircraft. Both sides thought they were secret weapons of the enemy. They come in many shapes and sizes but the epitome of the phenomena is the flying saucer due to one man Kenneth Arnold. On June 24, 1947, he saw nine objects flying in a 'V' formation over Washington State's Cascade mountain range. What they were we can only guess, we know they weren't flying saucers. He never said they were, rather he described them as "flat like a pie pan and somewhat bat shaped" and as "half moon shaped, oval in front and convex at the...

The Inuit Heritage Trust is trying to shed some light on an Inuit legend. For generations, stories have been passed on about a slaughter near Taloyoak which is a hamlet in central Nunavut. Three years ago Taloyoak resident Bob Lyall was camping on the shore of the Netsilik River, about 20 kilometers southeast of the community. Lyall says while setting up the tent he and his party heard voices and children crying. He thought someone was just playing tricks on them. But then Lyall realized they were alone. Lyall says long ago Tunnit people visited the river and killed the Inuit men there and took their women. Tunnit were the people who lived in the Arctic before Inuit. He says there are skulls and other human remains on the river banks. Lyall hopes the Inuit Heritage Trust will...