Unusual Stories in the News The Moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos may be part of another moon which shattered. It could have been Mars only had one moon in the past. What could have destroyed it? Perhaps a large asteroid, or meteor hit it. This might mean damage was also done to Mars. Perhaps one or more of the large craters on Mars were also caused by the same incident. We can’t be sure about any of this, but it is certainly a possibility. Having a spaceport is all the rage right now. It is like owning a Rolls, it imparts a sort of prestige to the country and signals they are a space power. Japan has been a high tech country for many years now. They have also had some impressive space missions. They have created a concept for a spaceport of the future. The idea is to build a floating island not too far offshore and connect it to the mainland. A train would take you to a spaceport located in Space City. It would also be a tourist attraction. Looking at drawings of the spaceport remind me of the buildings in Buck Rogers, the old television show. One young couple received the fright of a lifetime. These were just ordinary people, there was nothing unusual about them. They started to get the feeling someone was watching them. They had installed motion sensitive cameras to monitor their dogs and one day decided to see what the dogs had been up to. They got more than they bargained for. As they reviewed the video a semi-transparent woman dressed as a bride appeared on the video. The time stamp was 3:00 a.m. in the morning and the ghostly figure was wandering around in their living room. The couple is now checking the history of the house. More countries and organizations are preparing to meet with aliens, the kind who come from somewhere out in space. To this end, Nicaragua is appointing an Extraterrestrial Affairs Ministry. Well, why not, the United Nations has an extraterrestrial ambassador. It will not be a civilian agency, but a military one. Are they gearing up for a fight? Ancient scrolls are always interesting. In 79 A.D. the eruption which destroyed Pompeii also did serious damage to Herculaneum. In that town were scrolls which were all but destroyed. Scientists held on to them and preserved them hoping some day technology would catch up to the task of being able to read these very damaged scrolls. It seems they got their wish and now science will be able to read them. The scrolls had been at the estate of the father in law of Julius Caesar and the eruption from Mount Vesuvius did some of the worst damage to that area in Herculaneum. There was a collection of over eighteen hundred scrolls on the estate, which should make for some interesting reading. The solar system is huge based on any measure including the distances in the universe. What was believed to be the most distant object in our solar system was detected in 2018. It was believed by astronomers it was probably dwarf planet covered in ice which made it very bright. It was given the name Farfarout. Measurements have been obtained of 132 astronomical units from the sun. An astronomical unit is the distance from the earth to the sun and measures about 93 million miles. Pluto is only 39 astronomical units from the sun. The object which previously held the record for the furthest object in our solar system was named Farout. There were no banks in ancient Roman times. What did people do with their savings? They buried them in containers like pottery and such. That is why every once in a while, one of these containers is found. Recently a jug was found in Western Turkey which contained a treasure trove of Roman coins. 651 silver coins were found. Many of them in great shape. I am sure their value to collectors will far outweigh their value in silver. Browsers have been fighting each other for dominance for years with the lead being held by Google at the moment. Are there people out there who would like more than an ordinary browser, one which would have capabilities none of the others have? I am sure there are especially among the gaming set. As of the writing of this article I am not sure what will be released, will it be a completely new browser or an app, but it looks interesting because it will allow people to create realistic looking humans. It has been named MetaHuman Creator and Epic Games is putting it out. This is great for those out there who would like to create their own games. The heavy lifting of creating characters has been done for them. A lot of old cities have a story to tell about what lays beneath them. New Orleans is one which is trying to preserve the city beneath the city. There is plenty of history under that city. One of the mysteries was why there were so many goat jaw bones in a pit on St. Peter Street. It is believe the goats were killed for their brains which somehow were used in the process of tanning hides. It is said you can easily go back at least 300 years when you dig beneath the streets. It’s not much compared to European cities but interesting never the less. It seems almost everything we do which has any connections to a computer is in danger of being hacked and sometimes with deadly results. A hacker got into the controls of a water treatment plant in Florida. It turns out you don’t have to physically go to a reservoir to dump poison into it. The hacker changed the amount of a chemical being dumped into the water to purify it. The chemical was sodium hydroxide. He programed the mix to go up by 100 times creating a deadly situation. The chemical is more commonly know as lye. It was caught in time and the system has been cut off from remote access. Some scientists are shifting their views of where live began. They are setting their sites on Mars. I guess if they find microbes and the building blocks of life which are older than those on the earth, they might assume they developed their first. Many believe today life is always bombarding the planets from meteors. This is called Panspermia. It is beginning to look like this may become the dominant idea about the origin of life in the future.
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