The Buzz Week in Review
by Molly McCallAug 15, 2008
The world's greatest athletes may have tussled and triumphed in Beijing this week, but here at the Buzz, far more mysterious creatures held sway. A vampire dog galloped past, the body of a seven-foot hairy legend surfaced in a north Georgia woods, and an invisibility cloak cast its spell over readers. Read on for more of the week's buzziest tales...
A Chupa- what?
Early in the week, video footage emerged of a supposed Chupacabra, the mythological beast said to feast on the blood of farm animals and haunt parts of the U.S. and Latin America. Captured on tape by a Texas sheriff's deputy, the four-legged creature lopes ahead of the police vehicle, at one point turning its face to flash a long, bulbous snout.
Real? Who knows? Some investigators say the animal is possibly a coyote-fox mix; a biologist says it's a pit bull. Regardless, searches for "chupacabra texas" rose 13,424% over the past week, while the deputy's video clip ascended to the #1 spot in the week's top buzzing stories.
A Big- who?
Within days of the Chupacabra video, news broke that two men in northern Georgia had found the corpse of a Bigfoot—or so they claimed. Though the press conference to present the "evidence" wouldn't happen until the end of the week, the buzz around the revelation quickly reached a fevered pitch.
In just one day, more than 100 distinct searches related to the hairy monster besieged the Search box. In Buzz, a CNET article on the fervor topped the week's most popular science stories. Regrettably, the Friday press event left many questions unanswered.
An invisibility- huh?
Not to be outdone by vampire dogs or gigantic bipeds, researchers at UC Berkeley announced this week that they had crafted an artificial fabric that "can bend light around 3D objects." As NPR explains: "If they're able to expand the work to a wider range of wavelengths, the material could provide an unprecedented level of control over the way light moves, perhaps even making a "cloak of invisibility" possible."
The "perhaps" in that statement didn't stop anybody. Articles on the possibilities of superhero attire glided up the Buzz charts. In Search, lookups for "invisibility cloak" leapt, followed closely by the even more optimistic "invisibility cloaks." Why seek just one when you could have multiple copies?