The video game developer and publisher is looking for evidence that monsters exist in the real world. As part of its promotional campaign for the release of new game 'Monster Hunter: World', Capcom has teamed up with cryptozoologist Jon Downes to come up with a list of real-life monster legends. A prize of $70,000 is on offer to anyone who can prove that any one of these is actually real. If you want to become a real-time monster hunter, this is the chance! "Speaking to the world's leading real-life monster hunter, Jon Downes, we were inspired to re-open investigations into a select list of top 10 beasts, setting a huge bounty to really encourage people to get back out hunting for evidence," said Capcom's Senior PR Manager Laura Skelly. The list of eligible creatures includes Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, the Mongolian Death Worm, the Chupacabra, the flying snake of Namibia, the Yeti, the Yowie and the Cornish Owlman. "Much like in the new Monster Hunter: World game, we thought it was only right that the scale of the reward fit the task at hand," Skelly wrote in the press release.
Entrepreneur Stockton Rush is aiming to offer tourists the opportunity to visit the wreckage in person. While companies such as SpaceX and Virgin Galactic are looking to offer trips in to space, Stockton's company OceanGate has set its sights firmly in the opposite direction. More people scale Everest in a single day than have ever visited the wreck of the Titanic, he argues. There's a good reason for this too - at 13,000ft beneath the surface of the Atlantic, the final resting place of the famous vessel is accessible to only the most advanced of submersible vehicles. A typical seat on-board one of these costs anywhere up to $105,129. Stockton's objective is to reduce the cost significantly so that the average consumer will have a chance to venture in to the depths without having to win a fortune on the lottery to do so. The key to achieving this goal will be Cyclops 2 - a new five-person submersible that, once complete, will be the only privately owned submersible in the world capable of reaching the Titanic. Whether many people will actually be willing to sign up for the trip however remains to be seen.
The Mars Curiosity rover has discovered some rather peculiar structures and nobody knows what they are. Measuring mere millimeters in length, these angular stick-like features were visible in the first batch of photographs taken this year using the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) instrument. "They look remarkably similar to Ordovician trace fossils I have studied and photographed here on Earth," said astrobiologist and author Barry DiGregorio. "If not trace fossils, what other geological explanations will NASA come up with ?" Keen to get to the bottom of the mystery, the Curiosity team sent the rover back for a closer look. "This site was so interesting that we backtracked to get to where the rover was parked for this plan," said Curiosity team member Christopher Edwards. "In the work space in front of the rover, we have some very peculiar targets that warranted some additional interrogation." While at present it remains unclear whether or not the mystery structures really are the fossil remnants of some ancient alien species, NASA scientists are currently not ready to rule out the possibility. "If we see more of them... then we begin to say that this is an important process that's going on at Vera Rubin Ridge," said Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada.
