British explorers discover the light at the end of the tunnel... in the world's largest cave

A British caving team believe they have discovered the world's largest cave passage in the heart of the Vietnamese jungle.

The rocky passage is 150metres long and measures a towering 200metres in height - seven times as high as the vaulted ceiling of York Cathedral.

Called Hang Son Doong (Mountain River Cave) it is believed to be almost twice the size of the current record holder.

'It is a truly amazing sized cave and one of the most significant discoveries by a British caving team,' said Adam Spillane, a member of the 13-man expedition team.

Using a laser measuring device known as the LaserRace 300, which measures height and width, the team are now back in the UK analysing their readings.

The cave was originally discovered in 1991 by a Vietnamese Jungle man called Ho Khanh. However Mr Spillane said no-one had entered if before because 'it emitted a frightful wind and noise which was due to a large underground river'.

But assisted by representatives of Hanoi University of Science, the joint British-Vietnamese Caving Expedition 2009 spent five days exploring the cave in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park in mid-April.

The team spent six hours trekking through the jungle to reached the cave. Climbing down into a large chamber, they had to negotiate two underground rivers before reaching the main passage of the Hang Son Doong.

The team will return to Vietnam later in the year to complete the expedition of the cave and conduct a full survey.

'The cave is 6.5km long at present but the end of the main passage still continues with a calcite wall of over 45m high halting our progress,' Mr Spillane said.

'More work on the next expedition is required to make a complete exploration of Hang Son Doong and obtain a complete photographic record of the cave.

'It is a great achievement in this day and age to discover and explore such a fantastic cave.'




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ISS Tomorrow Morning

11 May -0.9 03:21:48 ESE 31

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

ISS Tonight

10 May -1.6 22:30:07 WSW 53

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

ISS Tomorrow Morning

10 May -0.5 02:54:03 N 32
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10 May -1.8 04:26:54 WNW 37

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

Which splitting maul should I buy?

In these tough economic times, many of you may be gearing up to use an alternate form of energy to heat your home. Firewood in particular. Personally, I would never own a home that was not heated with wood.

Of all the steps required to process firewood, my favorite is splitting! I see cutting, hauling, piling, and burning merely as the other steps necessary to get to do more splitting. I've been splitting firewood for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, that was my job while Dad was running the saw.

Over the decades I have learned a lot about splitting firewood, most importantly the proper tool. Forget about that mechanical log splitter. Not only does it take the fun exercise out of the most enjoyable part of processing firewood, but unless you sit on a milk crate and run the lever while watching someone else roll around on the ground loading the rounds, it's also way more work than using a maul. Not to mention astronomically more expensive.

The best tool for the job: 6# maul with a fiberglass core handle. It is just light enough to get good speed and make it CRACK against the round. Yet, it is heavy enough to carry through without stopping and sticking. The plastic covered fiberglass handle has enough flex to ease the shock to your arms and shoulders, and will last many years longer than even the best hardwood handles.

An 8# maul is too heavy. You can't get enough speed to get the good CRACK when it hits the round. Many times you end up with a THUD and no split.

4# (including 3.5# single bit ax) is too light. You get awesome speed and good CRACK, but it's too light to carry through the round. Most of the time it sticks and you find yourself doing a lot more handle wiggling instead of actual splitting. I use a 3.5# single bit ax for splitting kindling, works great for that.

And one last tip, never never never sharpen your splitting maul. Dull is good. It will wear into it's own best shape, getting better and better as the years go by. Sharpen it, and you'll be wiggling the handle a lot until it dulls again.


- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

News From The Observatory

A rainbow behind the trees!


Snoopy enjoying the warm springtime sunshine. Goldie is there too, but she's hard to see in the hole she dug behind the grass.


And now I'm mooning you from last night!


- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

Saucer Lands, Three Beings Appear near Temple, Texas, March, 2009

The following apparent UFO and alien sighting took place at night, near Temple, Texas, on March 22, 2009.

The main witness and his wife were heading southbound on I-35 from Waco, when his wife pointed to a strange light in the sky moving at incredible speed. It suddenly stopped on a dime over a field about a mile or so off the highway.

He pulled his car over to the shoulder of the road as they wondered what it was.

Suddenly it appeared to land in the field, and when it did, they could make out a disk shape but due to the darkness, it was hard to tell the exact shape of the object. It was a cloudy night.

He pulled his binoculars out of the back seat and when he focused in, he saw what did indeed appear to be a saucer-like object on the ground.

At first he dismissed it as a feeder for livestock due to the poor visibility, but soon realized this object had what appeared to be a door of some sort that opened up. From the interior of the craft, a reddish-orange light could be seen.

Then suddenly, 3 men (beings?) walked out of the craft and the door shut.

After about 3 minutes, the craft rose upward ,hovered for a brief time, and then took off northbound at a very high rate of speed and the witnesses lost sight of it.

He then refocused on the field to see if he could see anyone or anything in the field, but visibility was very poor. He did note that the men appeared to have been walking in the direction of a rest stop that was just off of the field near the highway.

He wanted to make a turn, go northbound, and stop at the rest stop, but his wife would not let him, she was getting concerned that the men could in fact, be “aliens.”

He never regained sight of the three figures.

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ISS Tomorrow Morning

9 May -2.0 04:00:41 NW 70

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

ISS Tomorrow Morning

8 May -0.3 03:34:46 NW 30
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8 May -1.9 05:10:01 WNW 42

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

Are UFOs real? Famous people who believed

The former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell has claimed that aliens exist and their visits are being covered up by the United States government. Mitchell is in good company in his beliefs. Here we highlight 12 other public figures who believe that extraterrestrials may have been visiting our planet over the last 100 years.

Jimmy Carter, US President from 1976 to 1980, promised while on the campaign trail that he would make public all documents on UFOs if elected. He said: "I don't laugh at people any more when they say they've seen UFOs. I've seen one myself."

General Douglas MacArthur, the Korean and Second World War soldier, said in 1955 that "the next war will be an interplanetary war. The nations of the earth must someday make a common front against attack by people from other planets. The politics of the future will be cosmic, or interplanetary".

J Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI from its inception in 1935 to 1972, said of a famous incident when flying saucers were allegedly fired at over Los Angeles in 1942: "We must insist upon full access to disks recovered. For instance, in the LA case the Army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory examination."

Monsignor Corrado Balducci, a Vatican theologian, said: "Extraterrestrial contact is a real phenomenon. The Vatican is receiving much information about extraterrestrials and their contacts with humans from its embassies in various countries, such as Mexico, Chile and Venezuela."

Professor Stephen Hawking: "Of course it is possible that UFO's really do contain aliens as many people believe, and the Government is hushing it up."

Dr. Herman Oberth, a Nazi rocket engineer who was taken to the US after the war and became one of the fathers of modern spaceflight, said: "It is my thesis that flying saucers are real and that they are spaceships from another solar system.There is no doubt in my mind that these objects are interplanetary craft of some sort. I and my colleagues are confident that they do not originate in our solar system."

Dr J Allen Hynek, director of the US Air Force's Project Blue Book investigation into UFOs, said: "When the long-awaited solution to the UFO problem comes, I believe that it will prove to be not merely the next small step in the march of science, but a mighty and totally unexpected quantum leap... we had a job to do, whether right or wrong, to keep the public from getting excited."

Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, commander of RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain: "I am convinced that these objects do exist and that they are not manufactured by any nations on earth."

Ronald Reagan, US President from 1980 to 1988, "I looked out the window and saw this white light.It was zigzagging around. I went up to the pilot and said, 'Have you ever seen anything like that?' He was shocked and he said, 'nope.' And I said to him: 'Let's follow it!' We followed it for several minutes. It was a bright white light.We followed it to Bakersfield, and all of a sudden to our utter amazement it went straight up into the heavens. When I got off the plane I told Nancy all about it."

Mikhail Gorbachev, the USSR's last head of state: "The phenomenon of UFOs does exist, and it must be treated seriously."

Richard Nixon, US President from 1969 to 1974: "I'm not at liberty to discuss the government's knowledge of extraterrestrial UFO's at this time. I am still personally being briefed on the subject."

Dr. Walther Riedel, research director at the Nazi rocket research establishement at Peenemunde: "I am completely convinced that UFOs have an out-of-world basis."

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