Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog, page 64
September 29, 2022
September 28, 2022
Goalball: The Heart-Pounding Sport Played Blindfolded
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
We have all likely seen or experienced a professional sport and the star athletes who excel at those athletic showcases. The games are not only impressive to watch but exciting for fans who have the opportunity to cheer on their favorite team.
Here at Ripley’s, we are always looking for a challenging twist on the seemingly ordinary, and in the world of sports, that twist may just be what is known as goalball! Unlike the sports you typically find when you turn on the TV and melt into your couch at the end of a long day, keeping “your eye on the ball” is not only unnecessary for goalball players, but impossible!
Read on to learn about this awesome game played by even more incredible athletes.
Kicking OffInvented in 1946, the sport of goalball requires players to cover their eyes and rely solely on touch and sound — Believe It or Not! It is the most popular team sport for the blind and visually impaired.
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Goalball has been included in the Paralympic Games since its debut in Toronto, Canada, in 1976. Designed for those with visual impairments, the game involves throwing a 2.76-pound ball across a court to score into a net, as well as defending your goal against shots from the opposing team.
Blocking involves players’ entire bodies, thrown to the floor as rapidly as possible. After all, balls have been measured leaving athletes’ hands at more than 37 mph!
Goal-OrientedThe eyeshades ensure a level playing field among players with varying degrees of sight loss. To guide the athletes, the ball is fitted with bells and the court has raised lines.
The International Blind Sports Federation (IBSA), founded in 1981, is responsible for sports for blind and partially-sighted people, and is the official governing body for the sport.
As of 2017, there were 81 competing nations!
Escape the Ordinary With Ripley’s Latest Book!Find this story and more inside Ripley’s all-new book! Escape the Ordinary’s 256 pages spark curiosity, challenge perception, celebrate differences, and curate a sense of wonder for the weird world around us! Available now on Amazon and at most major retailers.
Source: Goalball: The Heart-Pounding Sport Played Blindfolded
Diner Discovers Dinosaur Footprints on Restaurant Floor
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Usually at a restaurant, we’re too wrapped up in our drool-worthy meal to think about anything else. Well, one diner at a restaurant in southwest China proved that there may be more to your favorite lunch spot than just the good eats.
The Initial DiscoveryIn the restaurant’s courtyard, a patron noticed something unusual imprinted in the stone floor nearby their table — a set of footprints. These weren’t just any ordinary footprints though. These were dinosaur footprints aging more than 100 million years back.
Expert paleontologists visited the restaurant to analyze the scene and ended up finding another set of fossil footprints close to the original set. Paleontologist and professor at the China University of Geosciences Lida Xing and his team used a 3D scanner to confirm which types of dinosaurs were responsible for these ancient prints.
Both prints were made by sauropods, one of the largest animals to once roam planet Earth. They were plant-eating dinosaurs known for their extremely long necks and tails, growing up to 70 feet in length — Believe It or Not!
A City-Dwelling Dino
A diner at an outdoor restaurant in China spots something on the ground that looks like a dinosaur footprint. Paleontologists confirmed it is. Here’s my article for The Washington Post: https://t.co/1fcHfd78nS #dinosaurs #paleontology #china #sauropod pic.twitter.com/siAM9PeU70
— Dave Kindy (@dandydave56) July 30, 2022
These prints were found in a city inside the province of Sichuan, which is not typical as fossils in the city are far and few between. According to Xing, his team prioritizes any new findings and tries to arrive at the scene within 48 hours of the initial discovery. Construction is so frequent in China that the fossils may become covered up if they wait too long.
So, how were these footprints were in such pristine condition upon discovery? The answer lies in the fact that the restaurant was once a chicken farm with layers of dirt and sand for the hens to lay eggs on. This extra padding helped to preserve the footprints while the chickens inhabited the area.
The owner of the restaurant loved the look of the natural stone underneath once removing the dirt and sand and decided to leave it untouched. The prints are now roped off in the courtyard so that restaurant-goers don’t harm them.
The Dinosaurs Left Their MarkPaleontologists are quite fond of any print finds, as they help tell a lot about the behavioral patterns of certain species. There have been some other recent dinosaur discoveries in recent years all around the world.
Just this past August, 113-million-year-old prints resurfaced in Dinosaur Valley State Park in Texas. The marks were originally seen in 2000 but are typically covered by the Paluxy River. Recent drought conditions unveiled the tracks again after the river dried out.
Marie Woods, an archaeologist, was on the hunt for clams on a Yorkshire, England, beach. There, she stumbled upon a 165-million-year-old print, which was later discovered to be from a theropod.
A dinosaur footprint belonging to a “real Jurassic giant” has been discovered on the Yorkshire coast.
The print, said to be the largest unearthed in the county, was found by archaeologist Marie Woods. https://t.co/3CuxLMgbIt pic.twitter.com/NShuycsLQD
— Ticia Verveer (@ticiaverveer) April 19, 2021
There was yet another recent discovery, this time at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, by a husband and wife who were digging for stones at a construction site nearby. One of their stones turned out to be a neotheropod fossil, believed to be between 145 to 200 million-years-old.
So as we can see, dinosaurs were just like us — they craved a tasty meal and sought to educate themselves by hitting the books on campus! Keep an eye out, because you never know where the next fossil will be found, and it might just be you channeling your inner scientist next.
By Sam McCormack, contributor for Ripleys.com
EXPLORE THE ODD IN PERSON! Discover hundreds of strange and unusual artifacts and get hands-on with unbelievable interactives when you visit a Ripley’s Odditorium!Source: Diner Discovers Dinosaur Footprints on Restaurant Floor
September 27, 2022
Lasers Can Transform Plastic Into Diamonds, Scientists Find
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Marilyn Monroe sings the iconic line: “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” This performance cemented Monroe’s pop culture creds, from her hot pink dress and elbow-length gloves to her platinum bob. It also reinforced the idea that diamonds are every girl’s dream rock.
Personal jewelry preferences aside, there’s an unmistakable allure to diamonds. Some of this attraction stems from their relative rarity. After all, people have waged wars and committed crimes to get their hands on them. If you’ve ever seen the movie Blood Diamond, you also know about the troubling history of slavery associated with mining the precious commodity.
So, you can imagine the shock felt by the scientific community with the recent announcement that standard plastic becomes mini diamonds when bombarded by lasers! Keep reading for the lowdown on this ultimate trash-to-treasure transformation.
Trash Transformed into TreasureWhat happens when you assail sheets of cheap plastic with high-powered lasers? This was the question a group of European researchers decided to explore. The results made jaws drop as bits of trash became “nanodiamonds.”
What are nanodiamonds? They’re itty-bitty gemstones measuring just a few billionths of a meter (a.k.a. nanometers). In other words, they’re no path to cheap jewelry.
Yet, they come with a surprising number of possible applications. As German physicist and study co-author Dominik Kraus notes, “Nanodiamonds could… be used as ultrasmall and very precise quantum sensors for temperature and magnetic fields, which may result in a plethora of applications.”
Myriad Applications for NanodiamondsThe potential uses for nanodiamonds abound, offering scientists an exciting path for future discoveries. Possible applications include using them to turn carbon dioxide into other gases. Some researchers think they could be employed to deliver medicines to specific parts of the human body. Researchers also hope this line of study will help solve the current plastic pollution problem plaguing the world’s oceans.
What we can learn from nanodiamonds doesn’t end there. After all, they look like substances found on planetary ice giants like Neptune and Uranus. These planets have long baffled scientists, but with the help of plastic-turned-diamonds, they may soon get some answers. Clearly, there’s more to these findings than the makings of the world’s smallest engagement ring!
Implications of Nanodiamond ResearchIn terms of the specifics of the experiment, physicists used a sheet of polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, plastic. (Basically, the same stuff found in soda and water bottles.) After super-heating the material — we’re talking 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit — for a billionth of a second, big changes happened.
The heat mimicked the Earth’s atmospheric pressures, only millions of times stronger. The nearly instantaneous process hyper-compressed the plastic, changing its molecular structure. The carbon found in the plastic crystallized, permitting oxygen and hydrogen to escape. The crystallized carbon created nanodiamonds. As for the oxygen and hydrogen, they became “superionic water” or “superionic ice.”
This super-heated ice may represent the universe’s most common form of water and one that conducts electricity better than the old-fashioned wet stuff. The process of “demixing” carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen at a molecular level may also imply the presence of infinite diamonds (and water) on Neptune and Uranus. What does it all mean? We’ll have to wait and see. But one thing’s for certain: “Nanodiamonds are a scientist’s best friend.”
By Engrid Barnett, contributor for Ripleys.com
EXPLORE THE ODD IN PERSON! Discover hundreds of strange and unusual artifacts and get hands-on with unbelievable interactives when you visit a Ripley’s Odditorium!Source: Lasers Can Transform Plastic Into Diamonds, Scientists Find
September 26, 2022
September 25, 2022
September 24, 2022
September 23, 2022
Body Hacking with Cyborg Manel de Aguas
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Manel de Aguas, a Spanish cyborg artist and transpecies activist based in Barcelona, has pushed the limits of what the human body is capable of with the help of modern technology.
Through a pair of artificial organs implanted on either side of his head, Manel is able to “hear” the weather in ways non-cybernetic humans can hardly imagine — Believe It or Not!
A Fin-Tastic DesignHis Weather Fins, which resemble large white seashells, are attached above his ears and fastened to the temporal bones in his skull. They are connected to Manel’s brain through circuits and serve as functional organs that allow him to detect changes in temperature, humidity, and even atmospheric pressure.
Manel going under the knife to get his Weather Fins implanted. Courtesy Manel De Aguas and Marcelina Dvorak
The Fins also send sound waves to his brain through bone conduction. They can be recharged with solar energy and even connect to devices via Wi-Fi!
A Better UnderstandingWhen Ripley’s Believe It or Not! reached out to Manel de Aguas for his feature in our latest book, Escape the Ordinary, we couldn’t pass up the chance to ask him some questions.
Ripley’s: What inspired the design of the Weather Fins?
Manel: “The design of the Weather Fins is divided in two different paths: the ‘sense’ design and the ‘organ’ design. The sense design is the stimuli I perceive, which was inspired by underwater sounds, and allows me to experience the atmosphere as if I’m submerged in a sea. The organ design — the shape of the body part — was inspired by the fins of flying fish.”
Ripley’s: How long did it take to get used to the Fins, and what does it feel like when they are giving you information?
Manel: “It took me around a month to get used to the new stimuli and a bit more to get used to having a new physical body part… It feels as if I am submerged in a liquid environment that is constantly changing its properties.”
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Manel went on to say that an unexpected benefit of the Weather Fins was that they “increased [his] empathy toward nature and all other non-human species.”
Escape the Ordinary With Ripley’s Latest Book!Find this story and more inside Ripley’s all-new book! Escape the Ordinary’s 256 pages spark curiosity, challenge perception, celebrate differences, and curate a sense of wonder for the weird world around us! Available now on Amazon and at most major retailers.
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