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I agree, but 'tube drills' seem closer to Greenhalgh's 'copper wheel' hypothesis than 'banging one rock on another'. I'm not sure if anyone has actually proposed the latter as a general solution to the puzzle of Egyptian carving. If not, then Greenhalgh was attacking a straw man. But as...

I've just been reading a memoir by the celebrated/notorious British art forger Shaun Greenhalgh (A Forger's Tale: Confessions of the Bolton Forger, Kindle Edition). In a nefarious career lasting some 40 years before his detection and prosecution, Greenhalgh created imitations or pastiches of...

I've never heard of 'provenience' before, and it seems to be a specialist technical term in archeology. In general usage, 'provenance' would cover all aspects of 'where something comes from'. For example, in discussing a disputed 'Leonardo' ('La Bella Principessa') one might say 'It has no...

Avi Loeb has blogged about further results from his team's Pacific Ocean exploration project, seeking materials from the 'first recognised interstellar meteor'. This time he excitedly reports the discovery of 'spherules'. These are very small (~0.3 mm in 'size' - presumably diameter) and...

I note that the language of the letter is quite peremptory, using phrases like ...it is essential...it is imperative...there must be...it is incumbent...must transcend politics... See also the curious sentence Unless the word 'not' is actually an unintended insertion, this is tantamount to...

Nodules and crusts of manganese and other metals, sometimes including platinum, do form naturally on the sea bed. I haven't come across any references to wires or 'thin pieces' of metal. One might speculate that metals could be deposited around existing structures, like thin filaments of algae...

By an odd coincidence, Avi Loeb has just reported on an 'anomalous' finding from his current expedition to the site of the 'first recognised interstellar meteor', which crashed into the Pacific Ocean. The finding is of a small piece of wire containing manganese and platinum in 'anomalous'...

Just wondering what is the world record for the best- (or longest-) kept secret. Manhattan Project? Obviously not the longest-kept, since Hiroshima rather soon let the cat out of the bag. Not the best- kept either. The Soviets had spies in the heart of the project, and Stalin was famously...

Press reports based mainly on Ukrainian sources claim that Russia did start withdrawing its troops from the areas likely to be affected by flooding before the dam was breached. If true, this would be a strong pointer to Russian prior knowledge, though not conclusive, because there might...

According to some reports, a lot of Russian soldiers were also washed away and presumably drowned. If true, I don't think this counts very heavily against the hypothesis that the Russians deliberately destroyed the dam. It might just show incompetence and/or callousness, neither of which would...

A report in the UK Times yesterday (paywalled) stated that Russian sources were claiming the dam had been 'shelled' by the Ukrainians. I leave it to others to opine on whether an artillery shell could have done the kind of damage observed. I do think it would require exceptional accuracy for a...

I note that John Sweeney discussed the prospect of the Russians destroying the dam in his book Killer in the Kremlin, (2022, revised edn. 2023). He concluded: [Source: Sweeney, John. Killer in the Kremlin (p. 316). Transworld. Kindle Edition.] It perhaps hardly needs saying that Sweeney is...

I don't quite see how she gets the split at 0:20. You wouldn't break one solid piece of igneous rock (diorite in this case) just by tapping it with another piece. Either she is exploiting a natural weakness, or she has inserted something as a wedge. (There is wedging of some kind at 0:12.)...

A quick drive-by comment. Many streets in Victorian London and other cities were paved with granite 'setts': roughly square or rectangular blocks of granite from Scotland, Cornwall, Mount Sorrel in Leicestershire and other sources. They were not cut into shape with diamond blades or anything...

I don't know if this applies to the Glasgow case, but in an urban environment one source of apparent rapid movement might be the lighting of shop signs, advertising hoardings, Christmas lights, etc. If lights go on and off in a planned sequence, there could be an appearance of very rapid...

As the Bible says (Ecclesiastes?), there is nothing new under the sun. Appropriately enough, in this case. I've seen various people, including Aussie pilot Wolfie6020, giving similar demonstrations on YouTube and elsewhere. It would be hard to establish who was the first. Flat Earth...

The names 'Kevin' and 'Russell' are both fairly common throughout Britain. There is a Kevin living a few doors away from me, and my local phone book (for a single London borough) has entries for 13 Russells. Still, the name 'Kevin Russell', for someone of the right age with Scottish...

If you don't already know it, I suggest you check out Walter Bislin's earth curve calculator/simulator here: http://walter.bislins.ch/bloge/index.asp?page=Advanced+Earth+Curvature+Calculator By varying the parameters in the box below the visual display, such as observer height, field of view...

Various investigators have claimed to have observed highly significant 'paranormal' results (in the statistical sense of significance). The best known is probably J. B. Rhine, whose work on the subject was mainly in the 1930s. But other investigators have not been able to replicate his...

So we are using alien technology! And hiding it in plain sight...