Few areas of science are more controversial than cold fusion, the hypothetical near-room-temperature reaction in which two smaller nuclei join together to form a single larger nucleus while releasing large amounts of energy. In the 1980s, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleishmann claimed to have demonstrated cold fusion - which could potentially provide the world with a cheap, clean energy source - but their experiment could not be reproduced. Since then, all other claims of cold fusion have been illegitimate, and studies have shown that cold fusion is theoretically implausible, causing mainstream science to become highly speculative of the field in general.

Despite the intense skepticism, a small community of scientists is still investigating near-room-temperature fusion reactions. The latest news occurred when Italian scientists Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi of the University of Bologna announced that they developed a cold fusion device capable of producing 12,400 W of heat power with an input of just 400 W.

Recently, the scientists held a private invitation press conference in Bologna, attended by about 50 people, where they demonstrated what they claim is a nickel-hydrogen fusion reactor. Further, the scientists say that the reactor is well beyond the research phase; they plan to start shipping commercial devices within the next three months and start mass production by the end of 2011.

The claim

Rossi and Focardi say that, when the atomic nuclei of nickel and hydrogen are fused in their reactor, the reaction produces copper and a large amount of energy. The reactor uses less than 1 gram of hydrogen and starts with about 1,000 W of electricity, which is reduced to 400 W after a few minutes. Every minute, the reaction can convert 292 grams of 20°C water into dry steam at about 101°C. Since raising the temperature of water by 80°C and converting it to steam requires about 12,400 W of power, the experiment provides a power gain of 12,400/400 = 31. As for costs, the scientists estimate that electricity can be generated at a cost of less than 1 cent/kWh, which is significantly less than coal or natural gas plants.

“The magnitude of this result suggests that there is a viable energy technology that uses commonly available materials, that does not produce carbon dioxide, and that does not produce radioactive waste and will be economical to build,” according to this description of the demonstration.

Rossi and Focardi explain that the reaction produces radiation, providing evidence that the reaction is indeed a nuclear reaction and does not work by some other method. They note that no radiation escapes due to lead shielding, and no radioactivity is left in the cell after it is turned off, so there is no nuclear waste.

The scientists explain that the reactor is turned on simply by flipping a switch and it can be operated by following a set of instructions. Commercial devices would produce 8 units of output per unit of input in order to ensure safe and reliable conditions, even though higher output is possible, as demonstrated. Several devices can be combined in series and parallel arrays to reach higher powers, and the scientists are currently manufacturing a 1 MW plant made with 125 modules. Although the reactors can be self-sustaining so that the input can be turned off, the scientists say that the reactors work better with a constant input. The reactors need to be refueled every 6 months, which the scientists say is done by their dealers.

The scientists also say that one reactor has been running continuously for two years, providing heat for a factory. They provide little detail about this case.

The response

Rossi and Focardi’s paper on the nuclear reactor has been rejected by peer-reviewed journals, but the scientists aren’t discouraged. They published their paper in the Journal of Nuclear Physics, an online journal founded and run by themselves, which is obviously cause for a great deal of skepticism. They say their paper was rejected because they lack a theory for how the reaction works. According to a press release in Google translate, the scientists say they cannot explain how the cold fusion is triggered, “but the presence of copper and the release of energy are witnesses.”

The fact that Rossi and Focardi chose to reveal the reactor at a press conference, and the fact that their paper lacks details on how the reactor works, has made many people uncomfortable. The demonstration has not been widely covered by the general media. However, the day after the demonstration, the scientists answered questions in an online forum, which has generated a few blog posts.

One comment in the forum contained a message from Steven E. Jones, a contemporary of Pons and Fleishmann, who wrote, “Where are the quantitative descriptions of these copper radioisotopes? What detectors were used? Have the results been replicated by independent researchers? Pardon my skepticism as I await real data.”

Steven B. Krivit, publisher of the New Energy Times, noted that Rossi and Focardi’s reactor seems similar to a nickel-hydrogen low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) device originally developed by Francesco Piantelli of Siena, Italy, who was not involved with the current demonstration. In a comment, Rossi denied that his reactor is similar to Piantelli’s, writing that “The proof is that I am making operating reactors, he is not.” Krivit also noted that Rossi has been accused of a few crimes, including tax fraud and illegally importing gold, which are unrelated to his research.

Rossi and Focardi have applied for a patent that has been partially rejected in a preliminary report. According to the report, “As the invention seems, at least at first, to offend against the generally accepted laws of physics and established theories, the disclosure should be detailed enough to prove to a skilled person conversant with mainstream science and technology that the invention is indeed feasible. … In the present case, the invention does not provide experimental evidence (nor any firm theoretical basis) which would enable the skilled person to assess the viability of the invention. The description is essentially based on general statement and speculations which are not apt to provide a clear and exhaustive technical teaching.” The report also noted that not all of the patent claims were novel.

Giuseppe Levi, a nuclear physicist from INFN (Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics), helped organize last Friday’s demonstration in Bologna. Levi confirmed that the reactor produced about 12 kW and noted that the energy was not of chemical origin since there was no measurable hydrogen consumption. Levi and other scientists plan to produce a technical report on the design and execution of their evaluation of the reactor.

Also at the demonstration was a representative of Defkalion Energy, based in Athens, who said that the company was interested in a 20 kW unit and that within two months they would make a public announcement. For the Rossi and Focardi, this kind of interest is the most important.

“We have passed already the phase to convince somebody,” Rossi wrote in his forum. “We are arrived to a product that is ready for the market. Our judge is the market. In this field the phase of the competition in the field of theories, hypothesis, conjectures etc etc is over. The competition is in the market. If somebody has a valid technology, he has not to convince people by chattering, he has to make a reactor that work and go to sell it, as we are doing.”

He directed commercial inquiries to info(at)leonardocorp1996.com .

Source: Physorg.com
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-italian-scientists-cold-fusion-video.html

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The recent wave of deaths of animals around the world - of fish, birds and, as a new story at today's Anomalist reveals, hundreds of cattle - has generated a wealth of theories for the deaths that range from perfectly natural "die-offs" to a coming apocalypse of Biblical proportions, and just about anything and everything in between.

An issue that has not been addressed at length, however, is that relative to concerns that elements of the government may have with respect to these events. Is there official, behind-the-scenes worry about what is presently afoot? Very possibly.

And I say "very possibly" because official, governmental concerns about the nature of sudden animal deaths - and animal disease - have been in evidence for decades. If, that is, one knows where to go looking for that same evidence.

Bacteriological Warfare in the United States is a fascinating FBI document – declassified into the public domain via the terms of the Freedom of Information Act - that covers the years 1941 to 1950. Notably, of the file’s original 1,783 pages, no less than 1,074 have been firmly withheld from declassification by the FBI.

The file reveals a wealth of illuminating and disturbing data on animal disease and death, and their potential, theoretical links to bacteriological warfare and sabotage by enemy nations and individuals.

For example, J.R. Ruggle, the FBI Special-Agent-in-Charge at the Savannah, Georgia office of the Bureau in the early-to-mid 1940s, wrote thus to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover on February 3, 1943: “This office has received a copy of a communication from JOHN T. BISSELL, Colonel, General Staff, Assistant Executive Officer, Military Intelligence Service, Washington, D.C., dated December 29, 1942, to directors of intelligence in all Service commands…”

Colonel Bissel’s communication read: “It has been brought to the attention of this division the possibility in the immediate future of an attempt on the part of the enemy to plant bombs containing germs or to endeavor to create an epidemic, such as hoof and mouth disease, among cattle and other livestock. It is requested that should any information concerning the above come to the attention of the Directors of Intelligence of the Service Commands or the A.C. of S. [Assistant Chief of Staff], G-2 [Army Intelligence], Western Defense Command, that the same be transmitted by the most expeditious means to the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2 War Department.”

Evidently, such matters were of keen concern to U.S. Intelligence. And that concern did not go away any time soon. In 1944, the FBI prepared a document that dealt with the scenario of a widespread attack on the U.S. cattle herd via unconventional, bacteriological warfare. The document states:

“A review of the book entitled ‘Sabotage’ by Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn, which was published in September of 1942, discloses the following data:

“The complete record of sabotage carried out by Chernov, supposedly of the German Intelligence service in Russia during 1930 to 1936 is too long to put into the book according to the authors, but includes - killing off pedigree breed-stock and raising cattle mortality by artificially infecting cattle with various kinds of bacteria – effecting a shortage of serum to counteract epidemics of anthrax so that, in one instance, 25,000 horses perished as a result of Chernov’s sabotage – infecting tens of thousands of pigs with erysipelas and with certain plagues by having virulent bacteria placed in medicinal sera.

“In another point, the authors have asked the question: ‘Could such wholesale sabotage of agriculture as took place in the Soviet Union take place in the United States of America?’ They then answer the question that, regardless of how fantastic it might sound, such diabolical sabotage was actually practiced by German saboteurs in 1915 in the United States of America.”

The FBI elaborated further: “Anton Dilger, a German-American medical graduate from John Hopkins University, was in Germany when the First World War broke out. He offered his services to the Kaiser, and was promptly detailed by Colonel Nicolai to do secret service work in the United States. Dilger returned to America with a supply of cultures of glanders and anthrax germs. Financed by von Papen, he set up a laboratory in Chevy Chase, near Washington, and started breeding germs on a large scale for infecting mules, horses, and cattle awaiting shipment to the allies.

“This man then organized a band of some twelve assistants to travel around the country, carrying Dilger’s germs in small glass phials stopped with corks through which a needle extended. This roving band jabbed their deadly needles into the livestock.

“They also spread germs by placing them in fodder and drink. Thousands of soldiers, as well as horses and cattle, died as a result of Dilger’s germs. At last Dilger revolted against his mission of silent death. He was murdered by German spies a few months before the end of the war. Could it happen here? It did happen here!”

The FBI’s declassified records from 1945 reveal that the issue of cattle being potentially affected by bacteriological warfare was a major one. A memo to Hoover dated July 6, 1945 states: “You may be interested in the following information which was reported by the SAC [Special-Agent-in-Charge] of the Norfolk Field Division following a Weekly Intelligence Conference on June 28, 1945.”

The document refers to the work of a man (whose identity is concealed to this day within the pages of the declassified documents) employed by the then-Army Air Force at Langley Field, Virginia, and who had “been assigned to handling investigations concerning the landing of Japanese balloons in the states of North and South Dakota and Nebraska.”

In a summary report, the SAC at Norfolk informed Hoover: “I was interested to learn that recently several Japanese balloons were found in that territory which were determined to have been carrying bacteria. The bacteria consisting of anthrax, are placed in the hydrogen. I was told that such bacteria mainly affects cattle. When the bacteria lands on wheat or other types or farm land where food is being raised for the cattle, the bacteria remain in the food when it is eaten by the cattle, and upon human consumption of the milk or meat, the bacteria can be passed on.”

Particularly notable is a July 11, 1949 document that refers to the FBI’s desire to acquire “world-wide information on animal diseases and animal population.”

And, one year later, the FBI was still collecting such data. On October 19, 1950, the FBI prepared a document titled Abnormal Loss of Hogs in Nebraska and Illinois that dealt with an unusually high number of hog deaths in the aforementioned states - as a result of cholera. The files, however, make it clear that, in official, FBI quarters, the nature of the animals’ deaths had been viewed with deep suspicion.

It was concluded that the deaths were due to a “variant virus” or “atypical virus” that stemmed from “local conditions and the physical conditions of the hogs.” The important factor, however, is that this document was found within a file specifically focused upon bacteriological warfare. In other words, the FBI was still looking closely at any and all animal deaths that might not have wholly conventional explanations.

Of great significance is the fact that one of the cases that the FBI examined – and that is described in a heavily-redacted memo of May 29, 1950 – dealt with the discovery of plague-infected rats at the highly sensitive Sandia Base, New Mexico, and which was viewed in some quarters as being the result of nothing less than a deliberate attempt to clandestinely introduce a widespread plague on Sandia by hostile, unknown sources. Significantly, the Sandia Base was, from 1946 to 1971, the primary nuclear weapons installation of the Department of Defense.

Moreover, a document prepared by the FBI’s Special-Agent-in-Charge at its Albuquerque, New Mexico office on June 22, 1950, titled Bacteriological Warfare – Espionage-Sabotage (Bubonic Plague), refers to rumors then flying around the official world that an outbreak of bubonic plague in New Mexico’s rat population may have been the result of deliberate, bacteriological warfare-related activities by – once again - hostile, unknown forces.

The FBI noted with respect to its interview with a plague expert, who is identified only as a “Miss Greenfield”: “[She] is acquainted with the presence of the plague among wild rodents in New Mexico and in the United States for several years. It has now reached an area from the West Coast to a line running north and south at approximately the border of New Mexico.”

The FBI continued: “From August 1949 there were four cases among humans in New Mexico. Briefly, these four cases, one of which was fatal, were reported in New Mexico. Each case indicated that the victim had shortly before the illness, handled wild rodents which he had killed. The one case in New Mexico which was fatal was not diagnosed as the plague until after death.”

Notably, the FBI subsequently received from the Public Health Service two charts displaying the outbreaks of plague in both New Mexico and the continental United States during that period. And as the FBI noted with respect to the Public Health Service: “…they have found positive evidence of the plague among wild rodents in the states lying west of a line directly north of the east boundary of the state of New Mexico.”

The FBI’s Special-Agent-in-Charge at Albuquerque concluded his report thus: “Miss Greenfield has been requested to advise this office concerning any pertinent developments of the plague in New Mexico or in the United States that may come to her attention. In the event such developments are received, the Bureau will be immediately advised.”

And, in essence, those are the significant, declassified portions of the file that relate to animal disease and death that some perceived as potentially sinister in nature.

We now know that senior elements of, and agencies within, the government were taking a deep – and secret – interest in cases of potentially unusual disease and death in the U.S. animal population in the 1940s and 1950s.

We may also consider it highly likely that very similar, secret interest and concern is afoot today with respect to the recent wave of bird, cattle and fish deaths that have so dominated the news in the last month or so - regardless of the ultimate reasons behind the deaths.

Source: Monster USA
http://monsterusa.blogspot.com/2011/01/animal-deaths-national-security.html

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In the weird world of quantum physics, two linked particles can share a single fate, even when they’re miles apart.

Now, two physicists have mathematically described how this spooky effect, called entanglement, could also bind particles across time.

If their proposal can be tested, it could help process information in quantum computers and test physicists’ basic understanding of the universe.

“You can send your quantum state into the future without traversing the middle time,” said quantum physicist S. Jay Olson of Australia’s University of Queensland, lead author of the new study.

In ordinary entanglement, two particles (usually electrons or photons) are so intimately bound that they share one quantum state — spin, momentum and a host of other variables — between them. One particle always “knows” what the other is doing. Make a measurement on one member of an entangled pair, and the other changes immediately.

Physicists have figured out how to use entanglement to encrypt messages in uncrackable codes and build ultrafast computers. Entanglement can also help transmit encyclopedias’ worth of information from one place to another using only a few atoms, a protocol called quantum teleportation.

In a new paper posted on the physics preprint website arXiv.org, Olson and Queensland colleague Timothy Ralph perform the math to show how these same tricks can send quantum messages not only from place to place, but from the past to the future.

The equations involved defy simple mathematical explanation, but are intuitive: If it’s impossible to describe one particle without including the other, this logically extends to time as well as space.

“If you use our timelike entanglement, you find that [a quantum message] moves in time, while skipping over the intermediate points,” Olson said. “There really is no difference mathematically. Whatever you can do with ordinary entanglement, you should be able to do with timelike entanglement.”

Olson explained them with a Star Trek analogy. In one episode, “beam me up” teleportation expert Scotty is stranded on a distant planet with limited air supply. To survive, Scotty freezes himself in the transporter, awaiting rescue. When the Enterprise arrives decades later, Scotty steps out of the machine without having aged a day.

“It’s not time travel as you would ordinarily think of it, where it’s like, poof! You’re in the future,” Olson said. “But you get to skip the intervening time.”

According to quantum physicist Ivette Fuentes of the University of Nottingham, who saw Olson and Ralph present the work at a conference, it’s “one of the most interesting results” published in the last year.

“It stimulated our imaginations,” said Fuentes. “We know entanglement is a resource and we can do very interesting things with it, like quantum teleportation and quantum cryptography. We might be able to exploit this new entanglement to do interesting things.”

One such interesting thing could involve storing information in black holes, said physicist Jorma Louko, also of the University of Nottingham.

“They show that you can use the vacuum, that no-particle state, to store a lot of information in just a couple of atoms, and recover that info from other atoms later on,” Louko said. “The details of that have not been worked out, but I can foresee that the ideas that these authors use could be adapted to the black hole context.”

Entanglement in time could also be used to investigate as-yet-untested fundamentals of particle physics. In the 1970s, physicist Bill Unruh predicted that, if a spaceship accelerates through the empty space of a vacuum, particles should appear to pop out of the void. Particles carry energy, so they would be, in effect, a warm bath. Wave a thermometer outside, and it would record a positive temperature.

Called the Unruh effect, this is a solid prediction of quantum field theory. It’s never been observed, however, as a spaceship would have to accelerate at as-yet-unrealistic speeds to generate an effect large enough to be testable. But because timelike entanglement also involves particles emerging from vacuums, it could be used to conduct more convenient searches, relying on time rather than space.

Finding the Unruh effect would provide support for quantum field theory. But it might be even more exciting not to see the effect, Olson said.

“It would be more of a shocking result,” Olson said. “If you didn’t see it, something would be very wrong with our understanding.”

Source: Wired
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/timelike-entanglement/

It was fifty years ago on January 20 that John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th President of the United States. While historians debate over the nature of his legacy -- whether as just another proponent for the military-industrial complex who actually got the U.S. further embroiled in Vietnam, or as a possible renegade with a vision of a different future, who was eliminated before matters got out of hand -- there is no question that there was something about the man that brings the world back to him, again and again.

Yes, it was youth, that sense of style, that energy -- above all the sense of possibility that pervaded the man himself. His assassination, essentially a public execution, finalized the image and gave the entire world a sense of loss from which it has never fully recovered.

I am convinced that the day will come when we as a society will agree that JFK was killed in a conspiracy, something involving elements from within the U.S. national security establishment. The truth on that matter will not remain buried forever. So many people already know that the official statements of the U.S. government -- that is was all the work of one single unstable individual -- are false.

Even President Bill Clinton didn’t believe that. Shortly after he became President, he asked his Assistant Attorney General, Webster Hubbell, to investigate two things. “One, who killed JFK. And two, are there UFOs.”

Clinton may not have realized how closely the two questions may have been connected. Consider the likelihood that there is indeed a UFO reality and -- of necessity -- a UFO cover-up. Could Kennedy’s assassination have been related to the latter? The world of conventional wisdom would never pause to consider this, but -- really -- why is this so difficult to imagine?

The Kennedy assassination is something like Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. Everyone had a motive: the Mafia, the CIA, the Cubans, the Pentagon, the Soviets, and the Federal Reserve, for starters. Could that list also include Majestic Twelve, the name often ascribed to the powerful insiders who control the UFO secret?

My answer to that question is, why not?

We must recall that the UFO topic remains the great hole in our modern history. The great unspoken reality around which so much has happened within classified circles, and about which so little has leaked to the outside world. There is an enormous history there, waiting for future researchers to describe, once the repository of data becomes available. And it will. Make no mistake, it will.

Something as important as UFOs would not have escaped the attention of JFK. Throughout the 1950s, American newspapers reported sightings of the “flying saucers” much more seriously than they do today. The topic was major news several times during the decade. We know, furthermore, that at classified levels, the topic was taken very seriously. Why then, would Kennedy not have been interested? More to the point, how would it be possible for him not to have known something about it?

Kennedy was close to a legendary figure in the CIA named Art Lundahl, who had provided briefings to four U.S. presidents, as well as to Congress and the Senate, Lundahl was renowned for his outstanding ability to explain technical concepts clearly to laymen. Interestingly, Lundahl’s main interest appears to have been UFOs, a topic which dominated his personal library. In addition, according to an interview with Lundahl by W. Todd Zechel, a UFO researcher and former employee of the Army Security Agency, Lundhahl briefed Kennedy not only on Soviet missiles in Cuba, but on UFOs. Interesting, for sure.

Then there is the controversial Marilyn Monroe UFO document, which came to light in 1992. This is a single page memo from the CIA dated August 3, 1962, one day before she died, almost certainly because she was murdered. The information on the document came from two monitored telephone conversations: one between the journalist Dorothy Killgallen and her friend Howard Rothberg, and another between Marilyn Monroe and JFK’s brother, the Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

The Killgallen-Rothberg  conversation revolved around the fact that Monroe was telling secrets to select Hollywood insiders regarding her liaisons with the President, one of which was “a visit by the President at a secret air base for the purpose of inspecting things from outer space.” The conversation between Monroe and RFK focused on her anger at the Kennedys, the sensitive information she had in her journals, and her willingness to give a “tell all” press conference. The document bears the signature of James Jesus Angleton, head of Counterintelligence at the CIA.

Although the document lacks the kind of provenance that would make it of undisputed authenticity, I am one of the researchers who believes it is genuine. You can see the document and read more about it here.

So it looks like JFK was not only very interested in UFOs, but had connection to the topic in his capacity as President. Whether or not he was killed for reasons having to do with UFOs is not something on which I would care to pronounce a judgment. But I would say that, given the circumstances of his Presidency, it cannot be ruled out.

Like many people who have reviewed the life and Presidency of JFK, it’s my feeling that we lost something very important on that dark day of his assassination. What we lost was the implicit bond of trust that existed between the American people and their government.

The system that had been evolved for a century and a half, which despite all imperfections had moved in fits and starts toward greater power to the people, had made a great transformation during the Second World War. That was when the American republican system government became increasingly swallowed up by a “national security state.” It did not take new boss very long before it decided to remove the President in what became for all intents and purposes a silent coup d’etat.

Thus for good reason are we unable to look back at JFK, at the era of Camelot, and avoid that feeling in the pit of our stomachs. That feeling of loss, and the conviction that his assassination was a criminal action yet to be punished, or even acknowledged.

Yet, I prefer to remember something else about JFK. He was, without question, one of the greatest orators in American history. Much of that was thanks to Ted Sorenson, one of the greatest speechwriters any President was fortunate enough to have. But surely JFK had something to do with it, too.

So I would like to take a moment to re-read a classic statement made by the man. It was from a speech made at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York on April 27, 1961. He gave it to the National News Publishers Association. His subject: the dangers of secrecy.

    “The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and  we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it’s in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.”


If we want to honor the memory of JFK, we can do no better than to live by these words, and to fight what is most assuredly the best fight of our lives. It is the fight to bring truth to this world, to shine light into the darkness, to scatter the forces of evil.

Source: After Disclosure
http://www.afterdisclosure.com/2011/01/jfk-secrecy.html

The FAA has launched an investigation after a mysterious greenish-yellow goo fell from the skies and splattered homes in Snyder, New York on Tuesday, Jan. 18.

Homes along Washington Highway and Berryman Drive are now coated in yellow or green icicles. Walls and pavements are splashed with a bizarre deep brown substance.

Neighbours said the mystery substance appeared between the hours of 9am and midnight last Tuesday.

The colour and texture of the goo immediately sparked fears of 'blue ice' - that is, frozen human excrement known to fall from airplanes passing overhead, ABC News reported.

However the FAA swiftly launched an investigation and discarded that possibility.

A spokesman told ABC: 'The local flight standards inspectors investigated the situation and determined it was not from an aircraft.'

So what could it be?

The town waste engineer said they are looking in to it - and have already come across some rather distasteful theories.

'We received a call this morning from a woman who owns a house on the same street, Washington Highway. She gave us her explanation because it happened to her last year,' Lisa Kistner, a spokesman for the Amherst Town Supervisor's Office, told ABC.

'She said it's actually because the seagulls eat fast food at McDonald's, which upsets their digestive tract,' Ms Kistner explained.

The seagulls were eating leftover French fries out of paper bags discarded in the parking lots, the woman apparently claimed.

And, Ms Kistner said, as soon as the woman convinced fast food restaurants to clean up the rubbish in their parking lots, she no longer had that problem.

'She suggested that someone check the fast food parking lots because that is probably the root cause of this issue,' Ms Kistner said.

The woman's bizarre account may not be that far enough. Bird experts who have examined images of the goo actually agree they do resemble bird droppings - though seagulls were ruled innocent.

Instead, according to Cornell's Lab of Ornithology, the droppings may be from a large flock of birds often found in upstate New York in January - European starlings.

But with the town's engineers still doing tests, locals will, for now, simply have to wait a bit longer - and perhaps invest in a good umbrella or two.

Source: The Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1349151/Mystery-greenish-yellow-goo-falls-sky-New-York.html