Monotreme Mucus Bubbles In Greek mythology, Echidna was half-woman and half-snake. With Typhon, she birthed some of the most famous mythological monsters, including, according to various sources, Cerberus, Hydra, Chimera, the Nemean Lion, Sphinx, and Scylla. When early naturalists encountered one of the planet’s strangest critters, they weren’t sure if it was a mammal or …
Gravity Hills If you’ve ever taken an extended, curvy driving tour through mountainous, rural America – Hatfield and McCoy country or deeply forested Oregon, perhaps – you might have encountered a sign much like this one: Mystery Hill in Blowing Rock, North Carolina Known as gravity hills, mystery hills, magnetic hills, mystery spots, and a slew of other catchy …
Aye-Aye, Captain Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door— …
Man of the Hole South America’s Amazon Rainforest is, in many ways, the heart of our planet. The eponymous river drains more water than the next seven-largest waterways, approximately 20% of Earth’s total. The rainforest is the largest and most diverse in the world. Of all the plant and animal species extant, one in 10 lives …
Necrobotic Grippers Perhaps no other topic to date better fits the dual classification of “science” and “horror” better than today’s case. If you’re like us, you’ve never before encountered the term “necrobotic.” You’re not behind the curve; this phrase is a neologism. The prefix “necro” is from the Latin for “death, corpse, or dead tissue.” …
Bloop In the late 1940s, the U.S. Navy began to develop the Sound Surveillance System, an array of passive sonar stations designed to track Soviet submarines. By the late 1980s, SOSUS became surplus goods, as the USSR blinked out of existence. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began to utilize the system to study the …
Third Man Factor Who is the third who walks always beside you?When I count, there are only you and I togetherBut when I look ahead up the white roadThere is always another one walking beside youGliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hoodedI do not know whether a man or a woman—But who is that …
What’s in a name? that which we call Bold and Bossy By any other name would bolt as sweetly. — Bill Shakespeare, Boldeo and Bossiet We attempt to imbue much with the names we give our offspring and our critter companions. Horse trainers have a long history of apt, clever, and strange monikers for their …
2020: A Utah Odyssey Certainly one of the greatest science-fiction films of all time and one of the best films of any genre is Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 magnum opus, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Much of the credit, of course, goes to Arthur C. Clarke, the seminal writer whose short story The Sentinel inspired the film. Clarke co-wrote the …
Sylacauga In the last issue, we traveled to the strangely-named Benld, Illinois, to investigate a close encounter with a meteorite. In 1938, some humans had the closest recorded brush with a meteorite impact. Just 50 feet away, a space rock hit a garage, went through the ceiling of a car, its cushion, its floorboard, bounced off …