The Stadler Form Fred looks simple, yet fancy, like many of the humidifiers I saw when I visited Japan recently. It's only about $159 after being imported from Korea, so it's not absurdly priced like some of the ones I've seen. The only questions are whether it dispenses enough mist to properly moisturize the room, and if it has a big enough tank to last through the whole night, and if it's quiet enough to not wake you up every few hours. [Funshop via Dvice]

The picture above is a crashed UFO prop, complete with chasing LED lights.

Or there are the "ghost sliders," where you attach a set of casters to kneepads in order to drift across pavement like a ghost. This is dangerous. Don't blame me when you end up eating asphalt instead of candy and get your jaw wired shut.

There are hundreds of projects at the link. Check it out if you need something to keep you occupied this weekend. [Make]

Today, we spoke with a Denver-area student who claims to have worked with Falcon's father, Richard Heene, on a reality show proposal for ABC.

The student wants to sell the information and says the National Enquirer is considering buying it for between $5,000 and $8,000.

The student claims to have been hired by Heene, and says the two worked together from March until May 2009 to prepare "business plans and proposals" to pitch to ABC.

Here's what the seller says the documents prove:

"The show surrounds scientific experiments and controversial pranks, and one of the pranks within it — actually several of the things within this document — talks about very similar information to what is being debated on the air."

The seller adds:

"When Mr. Heene is denying having any involvement with this being for a show — when the little kid, Falcon, says 'Dad, you said to go hide in the attic, we're doing this for the show' — and then he's adamantly denying that, that's when I started cracking up because I have proof that that's not true."

The student says Heene never paid for the work, which took more than 15 hours. The student emailed him/herself the proposal as a record and doesn't believe Heene knows the seller has the information.

"I never would have thought it would become valuable, but at this time, this is kind of the evidence that they're looking for," the seller says.

"I'm a student, you know, so if I can get my rent paid from this it'd be awesome."

If you want to buy the proof, let us know, and we'll put you in touch with the seller.

Authorities are trying to rescue the balloon but there's no much they can do about it, as the UFO is flying without control over northeastern Colorado, pushed by 15 to 20mph southwest wind. According to Eloise Campanella, Larimer County Sheriff's Officer spokeswoman, "the device could rise to 10,000 feet." At that altitude, temperature is very low and there's little air to breathe.

The balloon was made with helium balloons and tinfoil by his father, Richard Heene (who is quite a weird character, as you can see in the video of him trying to prove life in Mars). Hopefully things won't end dramatically this time, and we will see a happy ending so the people at Pixar can make a follow up to Up!.

Update 1: The flying saucer is down. The boy is OK, but it's not clear yet if he was in the balloon or not. MSNBC is saying now that the kid wasn't on the balloon after they said he was, but CBS just said he was.

Update 2: Boy is not in the balloon. County sheriff is saying that the Colorado emergency office and various sheriff offices are organizing a search and rescue operation.

Update 3: They are evaluating areas for the search.

Update 4: The Heene family is one weird bunch. Once upon a time, they participated in ABC's WifeSwap:

The Heene family from Colorado live life on the edge. Wife Mayumi (43) and storm scientist Richard (45) take their three kids, Bradford (8), Ryo (7) and Falcon (5), out of school to go on storm chasing missions to prove Richard's theories about magnetic fields and gravity. If conditions are right, Mayumi wakes her family by shouting "Storm Approaching, Storm Approaching!" into a bullhorn. The family sleep in their clothes so they can leap out of bed and into the storm-mobile. Richard calls Mayumi his 'ninja wife'; she maintains equipment, drives the storm-mobile, films tornadoes and waits with the kids while Richard jumps on his motorbike, heads into the eye of the storm and launches rockets to measure magnetic forces. At home the family are as chaotic as a twister: the kids have no table manners and throw themselves around the house, and while Richard devotes every moment to his research, he expects Mayumi to cook, clean and run the house without any help.

Meanwhile on a quiet street in Connecticut, the Martel family — wife Karen (43), husband Jay (50) and their two kids, Max (11) and Dean (10) — live a life of calm and safety. Dad is so committed to safety that he runs a child-proofing business devoted to identifying dangers and risks and making sure kids stay out of harm's way. With all the precautions taken to keep them safe, Max and Dean seem to be afraid of everything..."you can fall down the stairs, get cancer from the microwave, get tapeworms from sushi, and the lava lamp could explode..." The Martels conduct safety fire drills, make sure the kids wear protective gear on their bikes and pogo-sticks and never let the boys out of their sight. The atmosphere in the house is calm and serene, and Karen and Jay are equal partners.

Now, enjoy this "rap video" with the three kids.

Update 5: I'm not surprised the father picked an UFO theme for the helium balloon. Check him proving life on Mars on iReport:

Update 6: One of the siblings says he saw Falcon getting into the UFO. Police are looking now for an object—presumably a box—that was seen dropping from the balloon.

Update 7: The boy was actually at home.

Purple Mountain Observatory and Chinese Academy of Sciences said that during the July 22 total solar eclipse observation, China had discovered near the sun, by observing staff, an unidentified object, it's physical nature remains to be further studied. Currently manpower is being organized to deal with this data, complete the data analysis and reveal the scientific results and this will take at least one year's time to finalize.

According to Chinese television, students captured the phenomenon with their cameras—the video and frames shown in this article—claiming that the object appeared as a "glowing blue sphere," and then changed its shape repeatedly.

We will have to wait until the Purple Mountain Observatory releases the actual video, as well as their conclusions. Until then, I am going to go with the standard a) venus lights, b) morning gas, c) dim-sum advertising blimp, d) all of the above. [Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail]

DAL164: Hey, do you see something over the... looks like a guy on a paraglider.. almost over the approach, er, the threshold of two-two right?

...

Looks like he hit the ground, dropped something off.

...

Now he's airborne again. I guess is it ah, looks like some guy on a parachute.

The question is: What the hell was he or she dropping? Why nobody has found the dropped object yet—if there was actually anything? Air, land, and sea police searches didn't find any traces of this very stupid and insane person. Or whatever it was, because for now it's just "unidentified."

Thankfully, nothing happened as it climbed higher than 1,000 feet across JFK's busy air traffic. [Flightglobal]

"I could be crazy, but I think I see a bubble canopy on this aircraft, which would seem to rule out the "UCAV" theory! The plot thickens..."

There's no record of any plane with this shape and a canopy in the US military arsenal. [The Dew Line]

This an artist rendering based on (not so) classified and unpublished photos obtained by UVonline.com reporter Darren Lake. The photo of the unidentified flying object—which apparently is a mystery unmanned aircraft nobody has ever heard off—was taken in Kandahar in 2007, but has been published now by a french magazine. [Air-Cosmos and UVonline via Flight Global]

Update: It's not a Phantom Ray. Look at the drawing. That UCAV prototype has been approved no for ten new flight, but it was in storage before that. This is a new plane.

The UFO features four color-coded outlets, a lidded bowl on top to store your gadgets (or chips—whichever you prefer) and a festive color changing light that visually reminds you about how much power you are currently using.

The device itself has no switches—instead, the unit is controlled via the iPhone using a free app. It allows you to turn each of the four outlets on or off as well as monitor your power consumption remotely. Expect this green snack bowl/power strip to be available this summer for around $200. [Visible Energy via OhGizmo]

In a report from Xinhua, the government-sponsored news agency, a group of journalists and officials were on a Southern Airlines flight in late February when one of them noticed an unusual luminous object traveling alongside their vessel.

After excitedly pointing it out to everyone around him, one journalist managed to snap a few photos before the object suddenly changed directions and swerved north east. The witnesses debated whether it had been a plane – but later, another plane did appear and everyone agreed that it looked nothing like the unidentified object they'd just seen.

Altogether, the alleged UFO sighting lasted about a minute. Any idea what it could have been? Aliens? Solar flares? AMERICAN SPIES?! [Xinhua]

From inside to out, the Klein Bottle experimental house plays with the theme of a mathematical puzzle that manifests in an interesting hodgepodge of geometry. But cleverly hidden within these angles and crevices is a rain water collection system and solar paneling (because aliens hate to pollute).

So be honest, readers. Would you live in a house that looked like this? And if so, would you be willing to transplant it into any normal housing development? Or would you need to be part of some off the grid martian colony? [dornob via io9]

To complete the UFO effect, the undercarriage lights up and the whole thing can vibrate to simulate motion. As far as specs are concerned, the desktop player can handle ASF, MP3, OGG and WMA format files and run for 15 hours through headphones and 5 hours on speakers. Availability and pricing information has not been announced, but the UFO will run in 512MB to 8GB sizes with a red or black color scheme. That's all well and good, but the UFO would be infinitely cooler in a portable version. [mobiBLU via GenerationMP3 via Electronista]

This supposedly historical shot was pulled from the 1997 documentary Area 51: Alien Interview. According to the film, on November 4, 1697, the citizens of Hamburg, Germany spotted "two glowing wheels" in the air. To some, it was just further proof of another civilization visiting Earth.
But to modern historians (that would be me, browsing UFO sites when I was bored one Sunday afternoon), these glowing wheels are proof not of future alien technology but of current Microsoft technology. Clearly the company has some sort of time travel machine that resembles a giant Xbox 360 logo. Wait, scratch that. According to this sketch, they have two such machines. And they're probably running some sort of advanced NXE with really fantastic avatars and Netflix streaming in 4K.

Well, that, or the pundits were right and Bill Gates is an alien after all. [flickr and Alien UFO Pictures and IMDB]

The blip was burning a hole in the radar with its incredible intensity. It was similar to a blip I had received from B52s and seemed to be a magnet of light. It had the proportions of a flying aircraft carrier.

According to the Ministry of Defense, it all happened over Norwich in 1957. The 26-year-old Torres was called along with his wingman, taking off the Royal Air Force base in Kent. But something strange was happening: He was ordered to shoot the UFO down before they scrambled off to intercept it, something that had never occurred before.

I shall never forget it, and for the last 50 years I have been waiting for an explanation, but I've never had one. On that night I was ordered to open fire even before I had taken off. That had never happened before. I was ready to hit the target with all 24 rockets: it would have been like buckshot out of a shotgun. I asked for authentication of the order to fire and I received it.

To make things even stranger, the now 77-year-old Torres has declared now that he received a visit the next day from an American. The man, wearing a trench coat, waved his badge and claimed to be working for the National Security Agency. He said to him that what happened the day before was to be kept under complete secret. Or else.

UFO experts say that, while all this could be explained by the existence of Project Palladium—the experiments that the CIA was conducting during those years to create false radar readings in the Soviet Union—this won't explain why the pilots were ordered to fire all the rockets loaded in their planes. Or why the blip appeared over British air space in the first place.

There's another interesting case in the newly-declassified files: An account of a near-fatal accident at 22,000 feet, 17 years ago. In this file, Alitalia Flight AZ 284 almost had a direct collision with an UFO while approaching London's Heathrow airport. Fortunately, nothing happened because the object vanished just before the impact. [The Age and BBC]

The object also appeared out of nowhere. It just wasn't there before. In fact, they don't even know where it is exactly located because it didn't behave like anything they know. Apparently, it can't be closer than 130 light-years but it can be as far as 11 billion light-years away. It's not in any known galaxy either. And they have ruled out a supernova too. It's something that they have never encountered before. In other words: they don't have a single clue about where or what the heck this thing is.

The shape of the light curve is inconsistent with microlensing. In addition to being inconsistent with all known supernova types, is not matched to any spectrum in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey database.

The only thing the astronomers—working on the Supernova Cosmology Project—can tell is that it appeared all of the sudden in the direction of a cluster with the catchy name of CL 1432.5+3332.8, about 8.2 billion light-years away. Hubble caught a spark that continued to brighten during a 100-day period, peaking at the 21st magnitude, only to fade away in the same period of time.

Apparently, a scientist at the LHC declared that the object is similar to the flash that an Imperial Star Destroyer does when reaching Warp 10. Either that or some dust on the Hubble lenses, so someone tell NASA to get some Windex up there too. [Sky and Telescope]

Created in collaboration with New York artist Peter Coffin, the 23-feet aluminum UFO is covered with 3,000 individually controlled Color Kinetics LED nodes, and gets its power from an on-board 6kw generator. And get this: you really can "phone home" with this UFO, as its displays are remote-controllable via SMS messaging.

It was flown in by mountain-rescue pilots, sweeping in from the Polish coast and circling over central Gdansk just after sunset. The whole performance was part of Gdansk Festival of Stars, and was the first showing of the artwork. And I really, really wish I could've seen it. [Cinimod Studio]
(Photo credits: Peter Turo, Dominic Harris, Michal Szlaga.)

Update: According to Dominic himself, the UFO was greeted with everything from cheers to laughs to screams. And here's an interesting bit of news: discussions are underway to bring the flying saucer to the US. Once they've worked out all the pesky FAA details of course. —Thanks, Dominic