Monsters and Myths

Medieval knights hid and secretly venerated The Holy Shroud of Turin for more than 100 years after the Crusades, the Vatican said yesterday in an announcement that appeared to solve the mystery of the relic’s missing years.

The Knights Templar, an order which was suppressed and disbanded for alleged heresy, took care of the linen cloth, which bears the image of a man with a beard, long hair and the wounds of crucifixion, according to Vatican researchers.

The Shroud, which is kept in the royal chapel of Turin Cathedral, has long been revered as the shroud in which Jesus was buried, although the image only appeared clearly in 1898 when a photographer developed a negative.

Barbara Frale, a researcher in the Vatican Secret Archives, said the Shroud had disappeared in the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, and did not surface again until the middle of the fourteenth century. Writing in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, Dr Frale said its fate in those years had always puzzled historians.

However her study of the trial of the Knights Templar had brought to light a document in which Arnaut Sabbatier, a young Frenchman who entered the order in 1287, testified that as part of his initiation he was taken to “a secret place to which only the brothers of the Temple had access”. There he was shown “a long linen cloth on which was impressed the figure of a man” and instructed to venerate the image by kissing its feet three times.

Dr Frale said that among other alleged offences such as sodomy, the Knights Templar had been accused of worshipping idols, in particular a “bearded figure”. In reality however the object they had secretly venerated was the Shroud.

They had rescued it to ensure that it did not fall into the hands of heretical groups such as the Cathars, who claimed that Christ did not have a true human body, only the appearance of a man, and could therefore not have died on the Cross and been resurrected. She said her discovery vindicated a theory first put forward by the British historian Ian Wilson in 1978.

The Knights Templar were founded at the time of the First Crusade in the eleventh century to protect Christians making the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The Order was endorsed by the Pope, but when Acre fell in 1291 and the Crusaders lost their hold on the Holy Land their support faded, amid growing envy of their fortune in property and banking.

Rumours about the order’s corrupt and arcane secret ceremonies claimed that novices had to deny Christ three times, spit on the cross, strip naked and kiss their superior on the buttocks, navel, and lips and submit to sodomy. King Philip IV of France, who coveted the order’s wealth and owed it money, arrested its leaders and put pressure on Pope Clement V to dissolve it.

Several knights, including the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, were burned at the stake. Legends of the Templars’ secret rituals and lost treasures have long fascinated conspiracy theorists, and figure in The Da Vinci Code, which repeated the theory that the knights were entrusted with the Holy Grail.

In 2003 Dr Frale, the Vatican’s medieval specialist, unearthed the record of the trial of the Templars, also known as the Chinon Parchment, after realising that it had been wrongly catalogued. The parchment showed that Pope Clement V had accepted the Templars were guilty of “grave sins”, such as corruption and sexual immorality, but not of heresy.

Their initiation ceremony involved spitting on the Cross, but this was to brace them for having to do so if captured by Muslim forces, Dr Frale said. Last year she published for the first time the prayer the Knights Templar composed when “unjustly imprisoned”, in which they appealed to the Virgin Mary to persuade “our enemies” to abandon calumnies and lies and revert to truth and charity.

Radiocarbon dating tests on the Turin Shroud in 1988 indicated that it was a medieval fake. However this had been challenged on the grounds that the dated sample was taken from an area of the shroud mended after a fire in the Middle Ages and not a part of the original cloth.

After the sack of Constantinople it was next seen at Lirey in France in 1353, when it was displayed in a local church by descendants of Geoffroy de Charney, a Templar Knight burned at the stake with Jacques de Molay.

It was moved to various European cities until it was acquired by the Savoy dynasty in Turin in the sixteenth century. Holy See property since 1983, the Shroud was last publicly exhibited in 2000, and is due to go on show again next year.

The Vatican has not declared whether it is genuine or a forgery, leaving it to believers to decide. The late John Paul II said it was “an icon of the suffering of the innocent in every age.” The self proclaimed heirs of the Knights Templar have asked the Vatican to “restore the reputation” of the disgraced order and acknowledge that assets worth some £80 million were confiscated.

The Association of the Sovereign Order of the Temple of Christ, based in Spain, said that when the order was dissolved by Pope Clement V in 1307, more than 9,000 properties, farms and commercial ventures belonging to knights were seized by the Church. A British branch also claiming descent from the Knights Templar and based in Hertfordshire has called for a papal apology for the persecution of the order.

Source: timesonline.uk

WHAT makes so many people want to believe in fabulous creatures? Chris Lavers and Joshua Blu Buhs set out to explore this question, and although one tackles an ancient myth and the other a modern one, they come up with remarkably similar answers.

The Natural History of Unicorns might sound whimsical, but in fact it is an erudite, scholarly book which uses the unicorn to illuminate millennia of social and geographical change. Unicorns appear in many guises in many cultures - from the ferocious one-horned ass described by the Greeks to the courtly, Christianised goat of medieval Europe and beyond. Lavers’s achievement is to show how each of these is a chimera based on startlingly accurate reports of real animals, carried over trade routes stretching from the African jungle to the Arctic Circle.

The unicorn’s susceptibility to virgin maidens, the curative qualities of its horn, its elusiveness and temperament: Lavers explains how these properties were shaped to suit the ideologies and beliefs of different societies, throwing up - and answering - fascinating questions along the way. For example, did khutu, a material used in ornamental knife handles, come from narwhals, giant birds, musk oxen or woolly mammoths?

For those, like myself, who always assumed that our forebears more or less made up unicorns from folk superstitions and a pinch of rhinoceros, Lavers’s book offers revelations not only about mythical creatures, but about the extent and effects of globalisation in ancient times. It’s eminently readable, too.

One of the themes of Lavers’s book - that belief in mythical animals is a product of social change - is central to Bigfoot, an exhaustive study of wild-man myth-making in the 20th century. Buhs’s book starts out in similar territory to that of Lavers, suggesting that the Himalayan legend of the yeti became “folklore for an industrial age” because it meshed well with Britain’s post-colonial concerns and drew on popular fascination with far-flung places - a kind of media-accelerated version of the same processes that created unicorns.

Buhs goes on to describe how the search for Bigfoot and Sasquatch was dominated by the concerns of white, working-class men. For this disenfranchised group the quest was a validation of their lifestyle, skills and knowledge, which they perceived as being threatened by mass media, formal education and popular culture. The hunters’ desire to be accepted as scientific, while simultaneously disparaging the scientific establishment, makes for thought-provoking reading: there are obvious parallels with the attitudes of intelligent-design enthusiasts and climate change sceptics.

Popular culture eventually defanged Bigfoot, and unicorn-hunting has fallen out of fashion. But both Lavers and Buhs suggest that these myths, and others like them, will persist in one form or another. Tellingly, both trace their respective subjects all the way back to Gilgamesh, one of the world’s oldest fictional texts, in which the wild man Enkidu is tamed by female sexuality. If belief in fabulous beasts has such deep roots, it is unlikely to go away any time soon - although with the Earth becoming an ever-smaller place, Buhs suggests that future monster-hunters may have to turn their attention to the stars.

Source: Newscientist

It was reported in the media last month that the lost civilisation of Atlantis had been discovered in the Atlantic Ocean, a few hundred miles off the coast of Morocco, just where Plato said it should be, beyond “the Pillars of Hercules”.

The image was discovered on Google Ocean by Bernie Banford, of Chester, and it showed a rectangular area roughly the size of Wales that appears to have roadways, man-made area divisions and a city-like grid design.

It was quickly discounted in some quarters, but whether the discovery is valid or not – other much-vaunted locations for Atlantis over the years have included Cyprus, the Azores, and even Antarctica – it has been postulated that Atlantis was the “mother culture” of the Egyptian, Native American, Mayan and other ancient civilisations around the world.

I think it’s more valid to treat Atlantis as a metaphor for an early advanced race which spread its knowledge around the world, and which was largely destroyed in some global catastrophe, rather than as one particular place.

Of course, the “A” word is not mentioned in academic circles without a smirk and a raised eyebrow. But the concept, that legend recounts as being destroyed by a great flood, has grasped the imaginations of generations of researchers and historians.

One author who has spent 20 years travelling, researching and scuba-diving to find evidence of this lost civilisation is Graham Hancock, of Bath, who has written three books on the subject – the runaway best-seller Fingerprint of the Gods, most notably, Heavens Mirror and Underworld.

Although Graham never discovered the actual location of Atlantis, and rarely mentioned the “A” word, his research has helped to shift the view that advanced societies could not possibly go back in to prehistory. He believes we are a species with amnesia, which has completely forgotten its remarkable past but, fortunately, our ancestors left clues in great stone monuments all around the planet that seem to be triggering a cultural memory recall.

Graham will be discussing his latest research into lost civilisations – and will talk about how our current civilisation, with climate change and rising sea levels, could become the next Atlantis – at the annual Megalithomania conference at Glastonbury on May 23 and 24 where he will be the keynote speaker on the Saturday evening, a role he has fulfilled previously at the conference, to great acclaim.

Almost every week a major archaeological discovery is made that pushes back the date of advanced cultures. Edmund Marriage, of Milborne Port, Dorset, who has been researching the Biblical area of the Garden of Eden, in the area once known as Sumeria and the Lebanon, points to the discovery, again with the help of Google Maps, of great canal systems and megalithic construction.

Edmund, who runs a research organisation called the Golden Age Project, will be outlining these new discoveries in the context of other megalithic sites in the area at the conference on the Sunday.

Megalithomania resides in a persuasive and growing minority that seriously challenges the current, outdated view of history, specifically from the Neolithic era going back to 10,000BC, the era of the legendary Atlantis.
thisisbristol.co.uk/wdp/mysteriouswest/Atlantis-key-lost-golden-age/article-768622-detail/article.html

BOSTON — The headmaster of one of the city’s most prestigious exam schools is dealing with an unusual rumor sweeping student classrooms.

There are no vampires at Boston Latin School, says headmaster Lynne Moone Teta.

Seriously.

Students at the school, which was founded in 1635, began e-mailing news organizations Wednesday night with the strange story of vampires roaming the halls.

“Supposedly 3 students believe that they are vampires and today when a student was bitten the police were informed,” wrote one student in a message to TheBostonChannel.com. “I heard that one girl was arrested another suspended.”

Police, however, denied reports that anyone at the school was bitten.

The rumors were strong enough to cause anxiety among the student body and disrupt classes on Thursday. “I seek your cooperation in redirecting your energy toward the learning objectives of the day. Please do not sensationalize or discuss these rumors,”

Teta wrote in a notice obtained by the Boston Globe and sent to faculty, students and parents. Teta said she was concerned that some students’ safety might be jeopardized because of the rumors. “At no time was anyone’s safety in jeopardy,” she wrote. In its long, rich history the school’s students have included revolutionary firebrands Ben Franklin, Sam Adams, John Hancock, but likely never vampires.

Boston police acknowledged visiting the school Wednesday after learning about the rumors. “We did go over there and speak to some of the students and quelled the rumors that were going and kind of told them the effect those rumors could have on the rest of the student population,” spokesman Eddy Chrispin said.

Interest in vampires among young people has been rekindled in the past year with the release of the hit movie “Twilight”. It tells the story of a teenage girl who falls in love with a vampire.

The movie, which stars teen heart throb Robert Pattinson, was released on DVD last weekend. The DVD sold 13 million copies on its first day of sales, according to Entertainment Weekly.

thebostonchannel.com/cnn-news/19020075/detail.html

A 150-year-old mystery has reared its head after a woman woke to find ‘Satan’s hoofprints’ dotted across freshly fallen snow in her back garden.

The single track of cloven-like prints - which appear to have been made by a two-legged creature - precisely resemble footprints recorded in the area in 1855.

The phenomenon, which has never been explained, became known as the ‘Devil’s foot prints’ in a local legend.

The new tracks appeared in fresh snow in Jill Wade’s back garden on March 5th.

Grandmother Jill, 76, of Woolsery, Devon, said: ‘I looked in the garden and it really intrigued me.

‘I couldn’t believe it - the footprints were in the shape of a cloven hoof. There were no other marks at all in the snow.

‘I was quite surprised by it and I hadn’t got a clue what it was, but I thought I would love to know.’

Scientists from the Centre for Fortean Zoology inspected the prints which measure 5ins (13cm) long with a stride of between 11 and 17ins (28 and 43cm).

Jonathan Downes, who runs the centre, is investigating whether the footprints could have been left by a hare or rabbits hopping on their hind legs.

He said: ‘Thousands of people across the world believe in the paranormal, but so far every single thing we have looked into has turned out to have a natural explanation. I’m sure these will as well.

‘Do I believe that the Devil comes from the pits of Hell to wander around the gardens of North Devon? Of course not.

‘But if you’re asking if there are things that can’t be explained by modern science, then yes. But human knowledge is expanding all the time.

‘I believe that things that are currently put down to the paranormal will one day be explained by science.’

The original ‘Devil’s footprints’ appeared after a light snowfall on February 8th, 1855, and travelled from Exmouth to Topsham in Devon - even crossing the estuary of the River Exe.

The tracks reportedly continued unbroken for 100 miles - appearing on both sides of 14-foot walls and locked gates.

Some villagers blamed the church, who had recently changed the standard prayer book, for letting the devil into their communities.

Others blamed animals, pranksters, and even a weather balloon - but the phenomenon, described as the ‘great Devon mystery’, was never explained.

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1161765/Ancient-mystery-returns-Satans-hoofprints-spotted-Devon-garden.html

A firefighter who was with the Roswell Fire Department in 1947 has confirmed that the mysterious crash in the New Mexico desert that Summer was in fact of an unearthly craft!

The firefighter, now age 90, related stunning information to this author in a lengthy interview conducted recently. Respected Roswell author Kevin Randle also talked with the involved fireman to confirm the details of his story.

Some time ago I located the son of Rue Chrisman. Rue was the Fire Chief for the Roswell Fire Department in 1947, passing in 1981 at age 98. Chrisman’s son explained to me that he knew that the town’s Fire Department was somehow involved in the crash event. But the son was sparse in his conversation, not really wishing to elaborate. When pressed, the son said, “It did happen. There was a big coverup. The crash was real.” I asked him how he knew of this, he paused and said, “I knew too many who knew.”

I then asked him if any Roswell Firemen from 1947 are still alive. He replied that there was still “one left.” He only mentioned the surviving fireman’s surname as “Smith” and that one of his family members attends the same church as the involved fireman. Working with Kevin Randle, we identified and located the elderly gentleman and sought his testimony.

When reached, the Fireman was somewhat hesitant to discuss the matter. But after some “small talk” he warmed up to discussion. In a far-ranging conversation, the Fireman related these incredible details:

- An intimidating Colonel from Roswell Army Air Field visited the Roswell Fire Department immediately after the crash. The Colonel explained to the fireman who were at the department that day that an “unknown object from someplace else” had crashed in the desert outside Roswell. The Colonel warned that no one was to speak about the event to anyone ever. He also commanded them that nobody was to go out to the site or respond to any inquiries about the event. He explained that “everything was being handled by the military.”

- Dan Dwyer, another Roswell Fire Department firefighter, did manage to go out to see the crash site, defying the Colonels orders. He confirms some of the details that Dan Dwyer’s daughter, Frankie Rowe, has related in numerous interviews over the years. Frankie maintains that her father was able to view the craft and its occupants.

- Dan related to him that the area surrounding the crash was secured and cordoned by armed guards. Firemen went out there on their own volition, not as a “department.” The Fireman did not want to talk too much about Dan Dwyer and Frankie Rowe though.

- The crash was of a craft not from Earth. The Fireman explained that it was not a balloon or any type of military experiment. He said that it was a “UFO.” When I said to him that the term “UFO” was not used back then…he said it was “unidentified- a flying saucer.” I asked him how he knew this and he stated that he was certain it was because of “what I was told at the time it happened.” He explained that the Colonel did not know what the craft was or from where it came…and that there was great concern over the situation.

- The Roswell City Manager knew about the event and came into the Fire Department to personally and forcefully order the department to say nothing of the crash. Although the Fireman could not recall the City Manager’s name at the time, I knew who it was. When I mentioned the name “C.M. Woodbury” to him, he said that did seem to be the name. As it happens, C.M. Woodbury would have been a very intimidating individual with whom to reckon. This is because C.M. Woodbury was known as the “Iron Major” - a decorated War vet of the notoriously effective 752nd Tank Battallion. Woodbury was also very close friends with Butch Blanchard, the Roswell Army Air Field base Commander.

- The Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) base Fire Department was heavily involved in the crash recovery. The Fireman explained that “this is where the confusion comes from.” The Fire Department that was most heavily involved in the crash retrieval was not so much the city fire department but the base’s own Fire Department. He asserted that the RAAF firemen “knew the most” about the event. He was unfortunately unable to recall the names of these firemen.

- The Roswell Sheriff’s Department was engaged in the coverup of the crash. The Fireman confirmed that Deputy Tommy Thompson was someone he knew at the Sherrif’s office who was told to “keep the quiet.”

- When asked how he “dealt with the fact that a craft from another world had crashed near Roswell,” the Fireman replied that they had no idea what the implications were, “we just didn’t really ever think about those kind of things at that time, but I do now.”

The Fireman’s testimony is nothing short of amazing. It confirms the unknown nature of the Roswell crash in 1947. It is, however, testimony. I appreciate the difficulties with “testimony.” Testimony includes utterances that are presented as evidence for the claims they express. There is an inherent problem with all testimony. The speaker’s reliability and sincerity are supported only by words rather than documents, photographs or other physical evidence. I appreciate that the Fireman’s words are not sufficient to justify the belief that the crash at Roswell was extraterrestrial.

However, when testimony is given by an individual who is in fact who he says he is- and who did not come forward but instead was “found,” we should pay attention to that testimony. And the truth of the event does not depend on taking the speaker’s word alone as evidence of truth. But the Fireman’s testimony is of special importance because he has never come forward publicly before with his story and he has no apparent reason or motivation to lie. The Fireman’s full name will not be released until his death. He is in the last years of life, living out his days peacefully with close family. Author Kevin Randle also talked with the Fireman after I did, and agrees that a barrage of calls and contacts to the elderly man by skeptics and others would be a disservice to an old man.

It is said that when a man becomes a Fireman, his greatest act of bravery has been accomplished. In this case though, the old Fireman’s greatest act of bravery was to tell what he knew about the Roswell event for the sake of history and truth.

ufocon.blogspot.com/2009/03/roswell-fireman-confesses-it-was-flying.html

The bizarre markings spotted using Google Earth’s new underwater search tool last week unleashed a tsunami of theories and speculation across the Web about the origins of the gridlike pattern.

The most popular theory was that the markings were signs of the lost city of Atlantis. But Bits readers also wondered if the maze of lines could be anything from the mystical island featured on the television show “Lost” to an underwater lair inhabited by former Vice President Dick Cheney.

According to Google, it’s time to shelve those tinfoil hats.

In an interview, Steve Miller, product manager for Ocean in Google Earth, firmly debunked rumors that the crisscross markings were anything other than artificial data remnants left by sonar-equipped boats collecting data from the ocean floor.

While sound waves are considered to be more effective than satellites for mapping strips of the ocean floor, they’re often more expensive and time-consuming to use. “The boats have to go slowly. Otherwise, they make a lot of noise and can wash out the readings,” said Mr. Miller. As a result, boats are used less frequently, leaving fewer gridlike sonar patterns visible on Google Earth’s map of the ocean.

For the patch of ocean that drew so much attention last week, there was a discrepancy in the readings collected from satellites and the higher-resolution echosounding data collected by boats at water level. That caused exaggerated traces to show up on the map. Typically, when data collected by satellites and sonar surveys are blended, the result is much smoother, Mr. Miller said. But here, the “batches of imagery didn’t overlap properly.”

Mr. Miller compared it to the blurry stripes that are occasionally visible in Google Earth’s land maps. “Those patches are from cameras and instruments using different resolutions,” he said. Over time, those uneven patches smooth out as Google puts more images and data into the system.

As for the speculation that the markings off the western coast of Africa were located near one of the possible sites of the fabled sunken city of Atlantis, Mr. Miller said it was a coincidence. “To my knowledge, the researchers weren’t looking for Atlantis. They conducted this survey many years ago.” They very likely sent out a boat to comb for additional readings in this particular area, he said.

Mr. Miller also highlighted several other findings in Google Earth’s new Ocean feature, including a newly formed volcanic island close to Hawaii and an underwater mountain range in the Atlantic Ocean where two tectonic plates are visibly shifting away from one another.

Was the whole “Atlantis” uproar a well-orchestrated publicity stunt for Google’s new ocean maps, which were introduced earlier this month?

Mr. Miller said no. But the reports certainly drew a lot of armchair explorers eager to view the waterlogged pattern. Searches for “google ocean” and “atlantis google ocean” spiked over the last several days.
bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/google-explains-watery-mystery-of-atlantis

On February 15th of this year at around 6pm the residents of the south eastern Siberian city of Chita (population around 300,000) in Russia witnessed a giant UFO cross their city and then disappear over the horizon. Some managed to photograph the craft with their mobile phones. Shocked pedestrians stopped in the town centre and in parks and pointed to sky declaring the object to be a UFO. Above is a photo of the craft.

One witness, a Ms. Anna Kotchetkova , who saw the object after her sons excitedly alerted her to it observed that it looked like ‘nothing on earth’. The UFO was described by witnesses as being completely silent and emitting no lights, its colour was grey-black and looked like a triangle with smoothed edges. Its shape was somewhat irregular and there was said to be some blurriness about the craft.

Other witnesses attempted to photograph the UFO but couldn’t due to its speed and difficulty focusing however multiple photos are said to have surfaced. The UFO was estimated to be flying at around 500-1000 meters above land and appeared to be around the size of a Boeing 747. It was estimated to be moving at around 7 metres per second.

The incident is being widely reported in the Russian media and immediately after the sighting many members of the press made their way to the Siberian city. UFO research teams are also planning to visit the area to interview witnesses.

Many suspect a secret UFO base lies somewhere in the vast spaces of Siberia.

This sighting adds weight to this view.

allnewsweb.com/page5995996.php

In legend, sprites are trolls, elves and other spirits that dance high above our ozone layer. But scientists at Tel Aviv University have discovered that some very real “sprites” are zipping across the atmosphere as well, providing a possible explanation for those other legendary denizens of the skies, UFOs.

Thunderstorms, says Prof. Colin Price, head of the Geophysics and Planetary Sciences Department at Tel Aviv University, are the catalyst for a newly discovered natural phenomenon he calls “sprites.” He and his colleagues are one of the leading teams in the world studying the phenomenon, and Prof. Price leads the study of “winter sprites” ? those that appear only in the northern hemisphere’s winter months.

“Sprites appear above most thunderstorms,” explains Prof. Price, “but we didn’t see them until recently. They are high in the sky and last for only a fraction of a second.” While there is much debate over the cause or function of these mysterious flashes in the sky, they may, Prof. Price says, explain some bizarre reports of UFO sightings.

An Electrifying Discovery

Sprites are described as flashes high in the atmosphere, between 35 and 80 miles from the ground, much higher than the 7 to 10 miles where regular lightning bolts usually occur.

“Lightning from the thunderstorm excites the electric field above, producing a flash of light called a sprite,” explains Prof. Price. “We now understand that only a specific type of lightning is the trigger that initiates sprites aloft.”

Though sprites have existed for millions of years, they were first discovered and documented only by accident in 1989 when a researcher studying stars was calibrating a camera pointed at the distant atmosphere where sprites occur.

“Sprites, which only occur in conjunction with thunderstorms, never occur on their own, and are cousins to similar natural phenomenon dubbed by atmospheric electricians as ‘elves,’ ‘goblins’ and ‘trolls,’” Prof. Price says. These flashes are so named because they appear to “dance” in the sky, which may explain some UFO sightings.

Candles on a Celestial Birthday Cake

Tel Aviv University’s research team is one of the leading global groups studying the phenomenon. But Prof. Price and his students are now working in collaboration with other Israeli scientists from The Open University and The Hebrew University to take three-dimensional pictures of sprites to gain a better understanding of their structure. Using remote-controlled roof-mounted cameras, the researchers are able to look at the thunderstorms that produce sprites when they are still over the Mediterranean Sea.

From their unique vantage point in Israel, the researchers are leading the world in the study of winter sprites. Prof. Price’s new camera techniques, in particular, have revealed the sprites’ circular structures, which are much like those of candles on a birthday cake. Using triangulation, Prof. Price and his team have also been able to calculate the dimensions of the sprites’ features. “The candles in the sprites are up to 15 miles high, with the cluster of candles 45 miles wide –– it looks like a huge birthday celebration!”

Because of their high altitude, sprites may also have an impact on the chemistry of the Earth’s ozone layer. “Since they are relatively infrequent, the global impact is likely small,” says Prof. Price. “But we’re researching that now.”

sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090223131119.htm