Giant Otters, Rogue Worlds, And Extrasensory Moments

A new theory tells us that planet Earth may have been hit by a rogue world long ago - infact, during the Late Heavy Bombardment  (yes, there really was such a thing!)
Apparently , the planets of our solar system were originally in a different order, but scattered like balls on a snooker table after a strong break: except , very slowly.
So where is the culprit planet , the cosmic cue - ball that set everything in motion ?
Apparently it is now debris, adrift in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter - well , that's the theory.

Meanwhile, in a laboratory...

The image below is from an article about scientists managing to maintain a substance as liquid below its freezing point.
Shrödingers substance ?
It is solid and it's not at the same time.
Quantum , anyone ?
I may have mentioned my theory that the world has been distinctly weird since the upgrade and restarting of the Large Hadron Collider in 2015, and I still believe that is true .
Well, as true as anything can be in this weird new reality where terms like post - truth and alternative truth are commonly used...


A recent study finds evidence of widespread synaesthesia, with many more people than expected attesting to have experienced the sensory crossed wires of synaesthesia.
I think it is a result of our constant use of multimedia - and as we progress to a world of communication by symbols and gestures, isn't it inevitable ?
Still - a new sense can only be good...

Giant otters once roamed the Earth .
Fossil specimens found in China have proved perplexing - mostly because why would an otter be so big ?
Seeking some form of context, I followed a timeline
This puts the giant otters in the Miocene era, a time when mammals became well established, giant sloths were nibbling leaves on the tree tops. sabre - toothed cats roamed the land, and giraffes and hyenas appeared for the first time
I imagine the only real threat came from the sabre-toothed cats - being the size of a wolf would be an advantage.
Which brought me to thinking of evolutionary adaptions - we are now capable of creating unique lifeforms
Adding two letters to the genetic code of e. coli microbes might not lead to a Jurassic Park scenario , but it's a start.
I had to interrupt my palaentological detective work, as it was yet another online rabbit hole; a depository of amazing information, but also a bottomless mine of trivia - sigh.
Time to get back to the world of hard facts, I thought - not idle speculation.
Difficult though, as I learned that the universe is probably the playground of super - intelligent robots.
Will we ultimately create AI that is self replicating , and determined to conquer the cosmos ? - if so, does that reality already exist ?

Eagle crater pic NASA / JPL - Caltech

It's now thirteen years since the Opportunity rover landed on Mars and crawled out of a crater to begin exploration of the Red planet.
Still going strong, it has surpassed all expectations.
Its companion , Spirit , sadly ceased contact in 2010 , but both rovers exceeded expectations, lasting way beyond their original remits.
Opportunity was to last 90 sols , but it still operates, albeit with a software upgrade to its flash memory storage in 2015, just before it entered Marathon Valley.
It is currently the longest operating offworld explorer ever - so let's get those medals ready...


Until next time !

City In The Clouds

The oasis in the desert was a legendary mirage, a cruel taunt for those who were stranded, dying of thirst. For some reason it seemed to feature strongly in all the literature I read as a child. I learned that it was mere illusion - but not only in the desert.
Widely reported visions of a city in the clouds have recently spread from China.

Fata Morgana describes an illusion (usually inverted) caused by the action of cold air layers meeting heat haze in the atmosphere, showing a scene which is often miles away - the name itself is from a tradition associated with the sorceress Morgan Le Fay, who is said to have conjured illusions of castles in the air, thus luring sailors to their deaths...

Morgan Le Fay  by Frederick Sandys

Allusions have already been made to the obvious mythos - Heaven or Valhalla depending on your personal views - or more recently, the cloud city in 'The Empire Strikes Back' , or 'Columbia' from the game Bioshock Infinite.
Not to be outdone, similar strangeness was allegedly seen in Hastings-On-Sea , here in the U.K.
Ahem
Adding to the weirdness , an alleged photograph from the Netherlands showing what may or may not be an inter-dimensional vehicle emerging from a portal - or trapped in one, it's difficult to tell, really.
The last image has been linked theoretically to some quantum badness unleashed by the Large Hadron Collider . Black Holes and a gateway to Hell itself probably...
Much ado has been made and the phrase 'parallel universe' has been bandied around. 

Another theory which was given as a reason for the vision of a cloud city is Project Blue Beam, in which NASA are allegedly projecting holograms into the sky by way of faking an alien invasion.
Why?- is the obvious question, yet there are no obvious answers.
All I can say is this - given that NASA are so cash-strapped, and constantly with the begging bowl for further space exploration, it seems odd that they can spend so much time and money on massive holographic projections.
On the other hand, this is exactly what's been done to replace the giant Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban.
So maybe...

Megastructures revisited

Last weeks flurry of excitement - the strange dips in light from a nearby star-led to a rash of  bizarre theorising involving the mooted Dyson sphere, an energy gathering construct of truly monstrous proportions (big enough to encircle a star for the purpose of absorbing all of its energy).
As per usual, the internet got carried away in a frenzy of excited conjecture (myself included), and totally failed to take a deep breath and calm down.
for this reason, the very fact that the Dyson sphere does not actually exist outside of the realms of theoretical conjecture was ignored.
Ahem.
That is not to say it is impossible.
Just highly improbable.

Whatever the cause of the irregular fluctuations, it warrants a closer look.
They are already pointing a telescope in that direction, thanks to SETI , and a further bout of targetting will happen in January.