Mammoths, Moon Express and MOFs

Extensive samples and research by hardy types who don't mind extreme cold, tells us a wealth of detail about former mammoth denizens who populated Wrangel Island , Siberia and St Pauls Island , Alaska, until relatively recent times - well, approximately 5000 years ago.
Isolated island populations with no real predators to worry about, so why the decline ?
It turns out that these isolated populations became extinct through riverbank erosion, and the gradual decline of water sources.
No fiery comet from above, just the everyday depletion of resources.

Wrangel island

All aboard the Moon Express!
For the first time ever, a commercial company has been cleared to fly to the moon . Ticket prices are yet to be finalised, though, and I'm personally concerned about which sunblock to wear.
Obviously factor 10,000 in some places - but on the dark side ?


It has been claimed that the reason we are alone in the universe is that we are too early , and there could be a gap of a few trillion years before we find other intelligent species to show off our snapshots of lunar holidays and such - ahem.
I think this is a defeatist idea, and we should rather devote resources to actively looking for such aliens - for instance - how about a giant ' x ' in space ?
Too obvious ?
Apparently a giant x-shaped structure has been found at the centre of the universe, although for the life of me I can't see it in the photos.
black holes can kill us from a distance - more bad news for those who prefer to impose order on their worldview.
Luckily we are just a tad too far away...allegedly

The strange case of ' Tabbys Star' continues with new measurements from Keppler that seem to confirm that there is indeed unnatural stuff going on.
The excitement is almost palpable , and now that crowdfunding to buy telescope- time is complete, we should soon have further evidence .
Of course, it wouldn't be social media without someone raining on the parade, so it has been mooted that this possibly epic event happened 1500 years ago, and even if we arrived almost immediately, it's quite possible that the advanced race of beings are no more.
Ho-hum, but hey - let's not be defeatist, they could also be heading our way, bearing gifts and the secret of good wi-fi connections, that sort of thing.

Bio - luminescent technology is becoming quite the buzzword.
The idea that we can encode organisms to grow in any form and provide bacteria - based illumination is creeping out from the realms of sci-fi , and into reality.
I think hybrid bio - mechanical forms have the potential to greatly enhance our environment - as long as we resist the Gigeresque mutations...in the same vein (pun intended) , deep in a Siberian mine, they have discovered unique elements which are known as MOFs - metal organic frameworks.
These oddities are very rare, but bursting with potential.
Their appearance would seem to be partly due to thawing permafrost - so it's not all bad...don't forget though, about the recently awakened anthrax from the thawing permafrost - also, in Greenland, we learn that all sorts of debris from Cold War military base ' Camp Century' , and toxic waste from project ' Iceworm' will come to light soon, as relentless thawing ice reveals its secrets.
Oops...
 

Dolly the Sheep, the Great Red Spot, and the outbreak of Ancient Disease...

 Farewell to Philae, the ill fated lander . Philae was the first man - made explorer to land on a comet - still there, but inoperative to all intents and purposes.
The mothercraft, Rosetta is still taking and returning photos of the comet, and in September will crash-land on the surface , bringing an end to the mission - leaving us with a legacy of space debris orbiting the universe forever.
Quite a big deal, when you think of it like that.

Remaining with space, we find the alleged solving of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter - okay, it's a storm system as big as two Earths, but it also generates heat in the upper atmosphere, which may explain the temperature similarity to Earth, despite the greater distance from the Sun.
I imagine further revelations will be due very soon, now that Juno has entered orbit around the gas giant.
Did I mention the fact that Juno was the wife of Jupiter in ancient mythology , and that Galileo named its moons after the mistresses of Zeus ?

the only sheep honoured with a plaque...

In other news, the worlds first cloned sheep Dolly died at only 6.5 years old (half the average life expectancy for a sheep) , which created a new fear that clones were short lived .
Luckly though, clones were made of Dolly, and they are all aging normally.
I remember the huge issue surrounding the whole Dolly thing, the idea of 'meddling with nature '  so the news that there are more clones is not at all comforting.
It begs the question, what are they not telling us ?
But don't worry - only four of the tested thirteen clones were derived from Dolly .
So that's okay, then...
I mean if there are 13 cloned sheep (fourteen, counting Dolly), who knows how many cloned people there are ?
Perhaps we should scan photos of Trump rallies more closely.

The temptation is to write 'wake up, sheeple...'

The Siberian permafrost is thawing, global warming in action - the immediate result is an outbreak of anthrax, supposedly from old reindeer corpses .
That's pretty bad, but of course, what else awaits us, hiding in the distant past ?
The Black Death which decimated medieval Europe ?
TB, Polio and other nasties once thought eradicated ?
 It doesn't bear thinking about, so let's lighten the tone...

Hello to new life - yes, apparently even on this old piece of rock there are still surprises, with the recent discovery of new species - specifically beaked whales, which have recently been cropping up around Alaska - eight in total, none of which are previously known about; in the heady rush to colonise / occupy outer space, it seems that we still have vast unexplored swathes of this blue world.
Even our understanding of the world as it once was, is frequently called into question - most recently by the discovery of  minute air bubbles in grains of rock salt - the specimen grains being 815 million years old, it implies far higher oxygen levels in the Earths atmosphere than previously thought.
This in turn means there is a large gap between oxygen and complex lifeforms evolving.
So there would seem to be something else missing from the equation.
Like the time it took for aliens to arrive and give Earth 'the nod'.

ALIEN 1- "This'll do, but let's start with simple forms like aquatic amoebas, sponges and ultimately cephalopods and fish, then land-based murderous creatures."
ALIEN 2 - "Don't you mean humans ?"
ALIEN 1- "Same thing, different Modus Operandi "
- instantly we have intelligent aliens who understand Latin; or at least watched stray galactic transmissions of CSI.
Which brings us neatly to -
Apparently grammar could easily create a barrier to our ability to understand aliens.
Of course, the whole issue could be irrelevant given the continued lack of contact (wired magazine have just explained the Fermi Paradox again, for those who wonder)
I touched on this previously - damnit there I go again, without a decent referential database to mine for past subject matter.
I need a robot to list all my previous subjects on this blog.
Oh, wait, that will be me, then.
Doh