A team of rock hounds is in chilly pursuit of meteorites, scouring their snowy surroundings as part of the 2010-11 field season of theAntarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) program.

In a recent blog post fromAntarctica’s LaPaz ice sheet, members of the search team reported the hunting is good.

“We’ve been camping on the icehere for two weeks and they have gone by fast,” wrote Melissa Lane of the Planetary Science Institute, which is based in Tucson, Ariz. “In all, we found 170 meteorites here and the most interesting one,petrologically, seems to be the last one found!”

Lane is a planetary geologist on the Reconnaissance Team, which also includes John Schutt, an ANSMET veteran of 30 years serving as the science lead and safety officer, Serena Aunon, astronaut and physician from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, and geologist StephenBallou of Beloit College in Wisconsin.

“We’ve all grown accustomed to the stark beauty here,” Lane wrote. “The flatness, the wind, the snow, and even (sort of) the cold are all special here. The team is going to miss this place, but we are excited for new scenery, too. We are moving our camp to the Patuxent Range that is over 100 miles to our NE. We’ll describe it once we see it.”

Better suited for Houdini

The Recon Team arrived at the LaPaz ice sheet Dec. 16, delivered along with its tents, sleeping gear and cooking stoves aboard a Twin Otter aircraft. Two other aircraft delivered snowmobiles the next day, allowing the eager scientists to begin their first meteorite hunt.

“The beauty of the area and sheer fun of navigating our snow machines over endless frozen oceanwaves? was a thrill for all,” said Ballou. “Spirits are high and we are all thrilled to be here, but every facet of our lives here is work. It is challenging to do normal everyday things like dress, eat — and just leaving the tent is often an act better suited for Houdini.”

The Reconnaissance Team is gearing up for 25 more days of camping in Antarctica, coupled with the change of scenery in the Patuxent Range, ”where we can continue our new passions ofmeteorite hunters and huntresses extraordinaire,” Ballou noted.

NASA’s Aunon described in a recent blog what the team faces.

“Winds, winds…and more winds,” Aunon wrote. “In Antarctica the winds are relentless and forced the Recon Team to spend yesterday and this morning inside the tent.

“We did manage to get out in the afternoon, however, and found an additional four meteorites in the field.”

Aunon said preparing to go out on the ice takes the better part of an hour. Team members put on multiple layers of thermal clothing, apply sunscreen, gather equipment and warm up the snowmobiles.

“The Ski-Doos are our best friend out in the field as they carry a survival kit for four people, meteorite gathering equipment, multiple liters of water, food, medical kits, iridium phones and GPSdevices,” Aunon said. “We take extra care in the mornings examining the Ski-Doo engines to ensure peak performance.”

Collection process

ANSMET field work has been supported since 1976 by grants from the Office of Polar Programs of the National Science Foundation and NASA’s Planetary Science Division.

Meteorites have been found in Antarctica since the continent was first explored. The first one was found in 1912, by a member of an expedition from Australia.

So what happens when a team member spots a meteorite?

The collection process starts by using the meteorite hunter’s toolkit, a relatively simple collection of gear: sterile bags to contain the rocks, numbered tags to label them, tape to close and seal the bags, a notebook to take down any distinguishing features of the sample, and scissors to cut the tape or the bags open.

Great care is taken not to touch the meteorite or even breathe on it. Above all, a dripping nose hovering over a specimen is a no-no!

The meteorite is placed in a sterile bag as quickly as possible, usually by putting the bag over it. The meteorite is measured and sometimes photographed, and its size and color and possible classification are noted.

A small aluminum tag with an ID number is also inserted into the bag, and the whole thing is then sealed up tight.

At the end of a good day, a hunter’s backpack can be full of these meteorite samples.

Collected meteorites are shipped still frozen to the Antarctic Meteorite Curation labs at Johnson Space Center. There the samples are carefully dried and cracked open, and small pieces are broken off for study as thin sections.

A day of rest

With the team ready to be transported to its new location, it was informed by briefers at South Pole Station Dec. 29 that weather over the Patuxent Range was not good and that the Twin Otters would be unable to fly out.

“Could it be true? A day off? As much as we would like to continue the search for meteorites, a day of rest was welcome,” Aunon said. “We were able to catch up on phone calls with family and friends, write postcards, wash our hair (very refreshing but time consuming), write in our journals and enjoy a matinee showing of ‘Nacho Libre‘ with the team.”

Now well rested, the Recon Team is primed to continue its meteorite adventure at the PatuxentRange.

“In all, this will require four flights to transfer tents, food, Ski-Doos, fuel, and people. If we?re luckywe?ll have two Twin Otters at our disposal and get everything transferred in one day. We?ll keep you updated,” Aunon said, signing off.

If you’d like to keep tabs on the intrepid explorers and their Antarctic field work, check their blogs by going to: http://humanedgetech.com/expedition/ansmet1011/

Source: Space.

Gold’s London AM fix this morning was USD 1,675.00, GBP 1,076.55, and EUR 1,294.94 per ounce.

Friday’s AM fix was USD 1,646.00, GBP 1,064.68, and EUR 1,274.29 per ounce.

Cross Currency Table – Bloomberg

Gold has risen in all currencies today and bullion up nearly 1 % to $1,675/oz. Gold rose 1.7% last week has risen more than 6% so far this year.

Gold jumped to its highest in more than a month as result of the uncertainty over of the Greek debt outcome and the growing geopolitical tensions with Iran and the US and Nato countries.

The Iranian geopolitical tension is supporting gold as Britain, America and France have delivered a clear message to Iran, sending six warships led by a 100,000 ton aircraft carrier through the highly sensitive Strait of Hormuz.

Reuters report that the EU has agreed to freeze the assets of the Iranian central bank and ban all trade in gold and other precious metals with the Iranian Central Bank and other public bodies in Iran.

According to IMF data, at the last official count (in 1996), Iran had reserves of just over 168 tonnes of gold. The FT reported in March 2011 that Iran has bought large amounts of bullion on the international market to diversify away from the dollar, citing a senior Bank of England official.

Currency wars continue and are deepening.

Many Asian markets are closed for the Lunar New Year holiday which has led to lower volumes.

Of note was there was an unusual burst of gold futures buying on the TOCOM in Japan, which has helped the cash market to breach resistance at $1,666 an ounce.

Investors are also waiting for euro zone finance ministers to decide the terms of a Greek debt restructuring later today.  This would be the second bailout package for Greece.

The risk of contagion in Eurozone debt and wider markets is leading to continued safe haven demand for gold.

Reuters Global Gold Forum

Silver surged 8% last week and is up nearly 20% so far in 2012 – thereby outperforming the other precious metals and nearly all assets.

Silver cut through resistance at $31 like knife through butter on Friday. Next resistance is $33 then and $35 and then the big $50.

Increasing speculation that the Fed will soon embark on another round of quantitative easing or QE3 is also supporting the precious metals and confirmation of QE3 could see gold reach $1,700/oz in short order.

Source: Prison Planet.

Clifton Vial, 52, climbed into the cab of his Toyota Tacoma on Monday night in Nome to see how far a road winding to the north would take him.

More than 40 miles out of town, at about 9:30 that night, he found out. As Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” played on the stereo and temperature dipped well below zero in the darkness, Vial’s pickup plunged into a snowdrift.

“I made an attempt at digging myself out and realized how badly I was stuck,” Vial told The Anchorage Daily News. He was wearing tennis shoes, jeans and a $30 jacket from Sears. “I would have been frostbit before I ever got the thing out of there.”

Vial found himself alone near Salmon Lake, on a road that doubles as a snowmachine trail in the winter and stretches inland from the Bering Sea city. Far beyond the reach of his cellphone, Vial slipped into a fleece sleeping bag liner and wrapped a bath towel around his feet. He occasionally started the truck to run the heater and listen to the radio.

Was anybody talking about him? Did they know he was missing? By the third day, Vial said, the truck was nearly out of gas. “I felt really pissed at myself,” Vial said. “I shouldn’t have been out there by myself unprepared for what I knew was possible.”

Normally Vial carries a sleeping bag, extra gasoline and other survival gear in the 2000 Toyota, he said. But on this trip he had few supplies, no food and no water. Even his dogs, a pair of labs that usually accompany him on drives, stayed home.

Vial kept busy trying to think of ways to stay warm. His wife and daughter were out of town, searchers said. No one would know he was gone until he failed to show up for work at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday.

CONTINUED at MSNBC.

*Taken from My Fox DFW.

A man used a frozen armadillo to attack a 57-year old Pleasant Grove woman, Dallas police said.

The incident happened on Sept. 29 in an apartment complex parking lot.

According to investigators, the altercation occurred when the suspect was selling the carcass to the victim, who planned to eat the animal.

The pair apparently began arguing over the price of the item when the man twice threw the armadillo at the woman.

The animal first struck the woman in the leg and then in her chest.

She was reportedly bruised by the attack.

Detectives have been unable to find the man, who could face assault charges.

*Taken from Infowars. Written by Paul Joseph Watson.

In a damning new lurch towards web censorship, Google’s news aggregator has blacklisted Prison Planet and Infowars despite the fact that both websites are internationally known and now attract more traffic than many mainstream media websites, while Google-owned You Tube has frozen the Alex Jones Channel based on a spurious complaint about showing Wikileaks footage that has been carried on hundreds of other You Tube channels for months.

After carrying our content for years, Google News last week purged Prison Planet and Infowars from its aggregator system, ensuring that our stories no longer appear alongside the likes of CNN and Fox News in a frightening early salvo in the move towards a tiered Internet that favors large corporations while independent voices are strangled.

Only smaller sites that re-post Prison Planet content have appeared in Google searches since early November, proving that the campaign is a deliberate effort on behalf of Google to restrict traffic to Alex Jones’ websites. Our stories have been linked almost every day on the Drudge Report for the past three weeks, as our readership figures soar past numerous corporate media websites that are carried by Google News. We are clearly a legitimate and internationally recognized news outlet and yet Google has blacklisted us because it disagrees with our political viewpoints.

In addition, Google-owned You Tube yesterday moved to freeze the popular Alex Jones Channel, which has well over 100,000 subscribers and has had over 75 million views. You Tube made a spurious claim that the channel had violated “community guidelines” by posting a segment from the infamous Wikileaks Apache footage, when the footage is in fact posted in greater length on hundreds of other You Tube channels, including Al Jazeera, Russia Today and CBS News.

Double standards: You Tube targets the Alex Jones Channel for showing a brief segment of a video that appears on hundreds of other You Tube channels, including CBS News and Russia Today.

When we responded to You Tube by pointing out that the Wikileaks footage in question appeared in multiple places elsewhere on You Tube in far greater length and detail, and that it was not vulgar or offensive but a real incident that was of clear public concern which was posted under fair use (USC Title 17, Section 106A-117), You Tube reacted by freezing uploading privileges for the account while also threatening to terminate it entirely.

You Tube is essentially sending a message that if you disagree with their decision, your claim won’t be considered, you will simply be punished to an even greater degree.

This is by no means the first time that Google and You Tube have engaged in open blacklisting of Alex Jones’ material.

Over many years we have documented numerous instances of censorship and attempts to chill free speech, includingYou Tube’s removal of The Obama Deception and Google’s refusal to allow its shopping cart software to carry the film after the company labeled the documentary ‘hate speech’.

With the Obama administration vowing to infiltrate and eviscerate so-called “conspiracy theories” byclamping down on free speech through the work of people like Cass Sunstein, Google and its subsidiary You Tube are now at the forefront of the agenda to turn the Internet into a sanitized and compliant forum in the same mould as cable television.

Once Google’s fiercest critics have been silenced for good the company can then set about implementing its CIA-backed total information awareness program, which will scour Twitter accounts, blogs and websites for all sorts of information left by individual users, aiming to use this data to “predict the future” and completely direct and control people’s lives and behavior.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has announced that Google, in conjunction with the CIA, is set to become the ultimate Big Brother entity that “will know so much about its users that the search engine will be able to help them plan their lives” by constantly tracking their location via smart phones and telling them where to go and what to do.

We have previously reported on Google’s intimate and long standing connections to government spy networks. The company was founded with the aid of CIA seed money.

There is also no doubt that Google is one of the corporations at the forefront of the government’s drive to use cybersecurity as a pretext for killing the free Internet, having previously worked with the NSA and the CIA.

While Google openly spies on people via their wi-fi connections and gets away with it, the company has dispensed entirely with its “don’t be evil motto,” helping the communist Chinese government suppress dissent while simply blacklisting free speech it dislikes in the United States altogether.

There can be little doubt that this latest lurch in web censorship is part of the overall agenda to tighten the noose around independent news websites as they continue to outstrip the establishment media in terms of trustworthiness and reach.

Infowars.com alone now gets more traffic than MSNBC.com, a multi-billion dollar news operation funded by General Electric and the military-industrial complex.

The fact that millions are shunning the mainstream media and flocking to independent media outlets undoubtedly has the system running scared, exemplified by the recent rebellion against the TSA which was led by the Drudge Report.

The fact that the status quo is rapidly losing its power to influence the body politic and that this is shifting over to independent media not controlled by giant corporations has the establishment petrified, which is why they are doing everything possible to tighten the screws on websites like Prison Planet, Infowars, and Alex Jones content in general.

It is evident that the system revels in any chance to dampen the loud voice that Alex Jones, Infowars.com/PrisonPlanet.com and its supporters have raised on the Internet, effectively challenging the status quo and mainstream media spin on major news and events. With the easy passage of the web censorship bill, it is clear that what is happening now to Infowars.com and Alex Jones will soon happen to anyone without a politically-correct message, particularly when that message is capable of resonating throughout large parts of the globe.

With Homeland Security now openly seizing websites with no due course or opportunity for redress, the age of Internet censorship has now begun, with an iron curtain beginning to descend over free speech as the United States enacts policies more draconian than those of communist China.

If independent news websites and their readers don’t stand together in unison to decry Google’s efforts to kill free speech on the Internet, the web as a last outpost for the tattered and torn First Amendment will be lost forever.

CONTACT GOOGLE – click here.

CONTACT YOU TUBE – click here.