It is a typical case of one of a pair of siblings breezing along and getting all the glory, while the other slogs away and receives little recognition. This particular analogy refers not to humans, however, but to the twin robotic landers currently operating on Mars, and to their achievements so far in searching for evidence the red planet once harbored liquid, flowing water.NASA's late-coming Opportunity, which touched down on Jan. 24, has delivered stunning images of and discoveries at its landing site, an area near the equator called Meridiani Planum.Early last month, the 150-pound (Martian weight) rover examined the rocks of the shallow crater in which it had landed so serendipitously and determined they had been altered by chemical interaction with water. Then, Opportunity...

Different from precognition and intuition, the practice of communicating mind-to-mind is an example of extrasensory perception. Renee Sarouphim and her husband play a "telepathy" game with their children each night. "In this game," she said, "my husband and I take turns and try to think about something and the children try to 'guess' or 'read' what it is that we're about. It can be an object, a person, an event, anything."The game, Sarouphim said, will help her children concentrate and bring the family closer together. "It helps us communicate and understand each other without the use of words," Sarouphim said, "and the children find it extremely funny, actually."Derived from the Greek term "tele,"...

As bathtubs go, Lake Okeechobee is fit for a kingdom: 135 miles around, more than 30 miles across and filled with a trillion gallons of water (give or take a few million). It's a scale that makes sloshing scary.A sudden windstorm this week set the big, shallow lake sloshing back and forth with a vigor usually associated with a near-hurricane. At the storm's peak, the lake was lopsided 17.6 feet above sea level at the north end but just over 12 feet above sea level at the south. The water teetered for nearly three hours early Tuesday until the winds died around 7 a.m. and the lake settled back to an even 14.3 feet."It was freaky," said Larry Crossman, owner of the Wanta Linga motel on U.S. 441 near the lake's north shore in Okeechobee. "There were weeds...

A hunt for new worlds was launched yesterday by a British-led project that aims to uncover thousands of alien planets, providing a massive boost for the search for extraterrestrial life. The idea that myriad alien worlds and life might exist throughout the universe seems increasingly plausible to many scientists.To date, the search for these so called "extrasolar planets" has been dominated by a team led by Prof Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley. So far, the tally is 123, all "gas giants" similar to our own Jupiter.Yesterday Europe launched a new planet hunt with the inauguration of SuperWASP at the Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory in the Canary Islands."SuperWASP is the most ambitious project of its kind," according to the...

A psychic researcher and a clairvoyant, author of 'The Book of Ahau' disclosed his findings this week. A reader and writer with keen interest in the mysteries of the ancient world, Govany Perony opens a window into concealed reality via his mind in the form of extrasensory visions and archaeological research.His method, 'Remote Viewing' is the act of seeing without being present at the target site. He used this method to penetrate the inside of the Great Pyramid and see the secret chambers.What he discovered was amazing. In the King Chamber of the Pyramid, behind the west wall he saw a chamber still intact with a mummy and offerings. Two pillars adorn the doorway and a corridor. The entrance to this chamber is a small pivoting door at the bottom of the south west...

After five weeks without a reported sighting, a big cat apparently is on the prowl again in Lake County. Tracks and other evidence have been examined and live traps have been set for what state authorities believe is a cougar that has taken up residence in an Antioch subdivision.Lake County animal control received reports on April 7 and 13 of a large animal near Beach Grove Road."My neighbor saw it. She thought it was a big dog," said Dave Wilms, who met several times with a representative from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources after finding a hollowed out area in a brush pile in his yard."It thinks it's a den," he said.Wilms, an environmental science teacher and head tennis coach at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, said he began checking...

An ambitious project to seek planets outside the solar system is being spearheaded by Belfast scientists. The ground breaking SuperWASP initiative is being launched by a team of astronomers at an observatory in the Canary Islands on Friday. The programme, which involves a network of cameras around the world, will measure the brightness of 50 million stars every night. The prototype WASP camera was developed at Queen's University, Belfast. Dr Don Pollacco of the university's Astorphysics and Planetary Science Division built the £400,000 camera. "While the construction and initial commissioning phases of the facility have taken only nine months, SuperWASP represents the culmination of many years work from astronomers within the WASP consortium," said Dr Pollacco....

The oldest pieces of jewellery made by modern humans have emerged in Africa.Shell beads found in Blombos Cave on the southern tip of the continent are 75,000 years old, scientists say. The pea-sized items all have similar holes which would have allowed them to be strung together into a necklace or bracelet, the researchers believe. Christopher Henshilwood and his team have told Science magazine the find is probably one of the first examples of abstract thought seen in our ancestors. "The beads carry a symbolic message. Symbolism is the basis for all that comes afterwards including cave art, personal ornaments and other sophisticated behaviours," Professor Henshilwood, of the University of Bergen, Norway, told BBC News Online. "Even in today's world, where...

Rocks from an ancient supercontinent, and fossils of one of the world's earliest known animals, suggest that animal life on Earth began at least 30 to 80 million years before most creatures began to show up in the fossil record, according to a recent study. The study indicates the "big bang" of life observed in the earliest groupings of fossils that date to around 543 million years ago likely was preceded by many years of evolution for creatures such as insects, crabs, clams, jellyfish, snails, spiders, sponges, starfish, worms and early chordates, which were distant ancestors to humans.Previously, researchers speculated that new models for evolution would have to be developed to explain the apparent sudden appearance of the ancient relations of many of today's...

Nasa's Spitzer Space Telescope has seen a display of hot stars behind a dust cloud that hid one of the most violent regions of star birth in our galaxy. Some of the stars are estimated to be 100,000 times brighter than our Sun. "We've never seen anything like this before," says Dr William Reach of the California Institute of Technology. "The massive stars are ripping the cloud of gas and dust around them to shreds," says Dr Anthony Marston of the European Space Agency. The region of space called DR21 is located about 10,000 light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus. The dust and gas is sufficiently thick that no visible light can escape for us to see. Previous observations with radio telescopes had shown a powerful jet coming from a huge cloud. And...