Amphioxus

Amphioxus means when both of the ends are pointed, like the lancelet. It is a small branch under the Animal Kingdom called the cephalochordata. Its important to us because scientists believe that this was the first of the vertebrates, and we, most likely evolved from it.

Polywater

It all started with the Soviet physicist, Nikolai Fedyakin, who performed experiments on the properties of water that had been forced through a narrow capillary tube. The experiments resulted in a new type of water with a higher melting point and a lower freezing point. It also had a higher viscosity than that of ordinary water. 

Boris Derjaguin, a physicist in Moscow, heard about Fedyakin's experiments and improved the production of the new water, even though it was in small quantities. Although his work was published in journals and scientific magazines, no one took notice of it until he went to England and presented his work at a conference. In two years time, the United States was studying polywater as well. 

The main debate between Russian and American scientists was the authenticity of polywater- whether or not it truly existed. Some said that polywater was simply water with small amounts of biological impurities. Others said that the high level of boiling point and low freezing point was due to the impurities present in the water. It took the Russians a little longer to come to the notion that polywater did not exist because they still wanted to cling to the idea. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywater

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/ATG/polywater.html

Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus from Extinction?!

This website looks pretty legit when you go onto it for the first time. When I was reading it, there was a tiny part of me that actually thought tree octopuses existed. But then I scrolled down to the bottom where they had some additional links and articles and found the following:

- Save the Mountain Walrus, another species in danger of extinction (and of course, the original link to that was down)

- Rock Nest Monster, Known only from its rocky nests and porcelain-like eggs, Cryptogorgo petronidus is so endangered that existential environmentalists wonder if it ever existed at all. (sounds a lot like something else if you ask me)

However, while doing some reseach on the website, I found that there were many people how fell for the website like I did. In reality, all it was was an internet hoax created by Lyle Zapato, who first started posting about the Tree Octopus in 1998, providing images of purported sightings along with general information about the habits and habitat of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. Lyle's hoax was so well constructed that many people fell for it and continue to fall for, and the hoax even inspired the term “Tree Octopus Problem” to refer to Internet literacy issues.

And oddly enough, the website I went to was http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/faq.html, probably created by Lyle Zapato.

I think its amazing what people can make you believe on the internet. Anything can look credible, but I guess its up to you to recognize whether or not it really is true.