Weird Wednesday - Message From Mars

Mars

The Mars Curiosity Rover is due to land on the red planet in just a few days. Very cool, you might think, but not exactly something for Weird Wednesday. But among many other expected scientific discoveries, Curiosity just might get to the bottom of one long forgotten mystery: The Mysterious Mars Messages discovered by Guglielmo Marconi over 90 years ago. And that, of course, is perfect for Weird Wednesday.

A Nobel Prize winner, Marconi was a pioneer in the early development of radio. In the early 1920s, Marconi believed he received signals from another world.

Guglielmo Marconi

Using a special experimental apparatus on his Yacht, the Electra in the Mediterranean, Marconi received radio waves of a much greater wavelength than any produced on Earth at the time. This wasn't without controversy, and many experts believed the so-called signals were caused by natural storms on Mars, or perhaps some other, mundane earthy source.

But what fascinated Marconi about the signals was the fact that they seemed to repeat the Morse code for the letter "V." It seemed highly unlikely to him that a natural source would use Morse code. In fact, Marconi himself had used Morse code for the letter "V" many years previously in one of his first wireless tests. Could the strange signals be sending his own code back to him?

Weird Friday - Weird Vehicles Part 2

This week's special Friday edition of Weird Wednesday features another excursion into the Weird Vehicle Garage (check out Weird Vehicles Part-1) - not to be confused with the Mythik Garage, which is slowly being filled with cars from the stories of Mythik Imagination; but that is a tale for another day.

Top Speed: 70mph Land - 10 knots Sea

First up is the Surface Orbiter. Made from a 1958 milk tanker (there are such things as milk tankers??) the Surface Orbiter is designed to circumnavigate the globe. Self sufficient and capable of traveling over land and sea, it has ventured over 33,000 miles on land and 3,000 miles at sea in the quest to travel around the world.

Weird Thursday - Weird Vehicles Part 1

Today's weirdness is a day late, but is hopefully worth the wait. We've got a garage full of odd sci-fi conveyances that are (or have been) real, believe it or not. It ended up being rather crowded in our Weird Garage, so this is Weird Vehicles Part 1.

Top Speed: 20 mph

First up is the LeTourneau Overland MkII Land Train. It is like the Antarctic Snow Cruiser on steroids. Perfect for hauling much needed supplies across the Martian tundra (or across earthly deserts,) the Overland MkII was as long as two football fields. It had 54 electrically powered wheels and could carry 150 tons of cargo. Each wheel was over 11 feet tall. The idea was that it would be used by the Army to deliver goods to inhospitable and remote locales, but by the time it was ready for action in 1962, it was rendered obsolete by newly developed aircraft technologies. Sadly, most of the Land Train has been sold for scrap, although you can still see the restored lead car at the Yuma Proving Grounds Heritage Center.

Weird Wednesday - Phaistos Disc and Rongorongo

Phaistos Disc - Side A
(click to supersize)

For some reason, I am fascinated by mysterious, undeciphered writing (check out Weird Wednesday - The Voynich Manuscript.) Today, we have not one, but two good mysteries from the Mythik Story Idea List And Weird Things File :)

The Phaistos Disc is, oddly enough, an approximately 3600 year old disc-shaped clay artifact discovered in Crete in 1908. Although the dating is imprecise, and some archeologists do think it is a hoax, it is generally accepted by the scientific community as the real deal.

It has symbols or "signs" in a spiral pattern on both sides. There are 45 unique signs that make up its "alphabet," and there are a total of 241 "tokens" made up of the signs. Many of the signs seem to represent people, faces, and objects such as weapons and tools. The signs have been compared to the symbols in Linear A and Anatolian and even Egyptian Hieroglyphics. There is even a theory that it may be the result of the world's first printing press. But so far, nobody has been able to come up with a conclusive translation.

Weird Wednesday - Flying Humanoids Over Mexico

Today's Weird Wednesday is a special guest post from M. Pax, a talented SF&F writer who also enjoys the occasional bit of weirdness. Be sure to check out her always interesting blog posts at Wistful Nebulae and her website, which has tons of cool stuff. Let the weirdness begin, M. Pax:

Reports have been cropping up of terrifying encounters with flying “humanoids” in Mexico. One of the most fascinating reports comes from a police officer in Monterrey. He says he was attacked in January 2004 by a flying entity draped in black.

Weird Wednesday - Strange Places

So I've been collecting a small database of, shall we say, odd places. I have a theory that if you dig around enough, you can probably find something weird about just about any place. But the locations in this list sort of stand up and shout out how odd they really are and don't require much digging at all. I've been using the list for possible locations in some Weird West stories. Strangely enough, most of them have the word "canyon" or "devil" in their name. Bonus points if they have both. And if it's not "canyon" or "devil," it's a mountain. So if you ever see a sign pointing the way to "Devil Mountain Canyon," go the other way. Alright, now for the list:

Weird Wednesday: Orion Battleship

A "small" Project Orion ship

Today's edition of Weird Wednesday features the Orion Battleship.

But first, a little history:

Sponsored by the U.S. Government, Project Orion dates back all the way to the late 1940's and officially began in 1958. The idea was to explode nuclear devices behind a space ship and ride the shock wave forward. 800 atomic blasts later, and you've ridden an atomic hop ball into orbit. Keep it up and you could even get to Pluto and back in under a year - if you managed to stay in one piece.

Weird Wednesday - The Evolution Machine

First, check out this article from New Scientist about The Evolution Machine. It's OK, I'll wait.

I love the description in the first paragraph of what sounds like a mad scientist Lego Machine mixed with Dr. Frankenstein designer labware and tormented bacteria. And, it would all fit on the desk in your dorm room or spare bedroom:

"Say hello to the evolution machine. It can achieve in days what takes genetic engineers years. So far it is just a prototype, but if its proponents are to be believed, future versions could revolutionise biology, allowing us to evolve new organisms or rewrite whole genomes with ease. It might even transform humanity itself."

That last line is pretty bold, but it's the aim of a geneticist from Harvard Medical School named George Church. His group has created this machine designed to "evolve" biological organisms using "highly directed evolution." This method of genetic engineering has been christened MAGE - Multiplex Automated Genome Engineering.

Weird Wednesday - Lifeboat Foundation

At first, I thought the Lifeboat Foundation was a made up thing. Maybe some kind of J.J. Abrams-esque fictional web site along the lines of the Hanso Foundation. But nope, it appears to be the real deal.

The purpose of the Lifeboat Foundation is to protect humanity from, well, just about everything. From nano-plagues to asteroidal extinction, they have a plan to save the day. Heck, they even have backups for backups.

Ark-I, a self sustaining space colony, is their "fallback position in case programs such as our BioShield and NanoShield fail." That's some serious safety! The foundation is a treasure trove of sometimes weird, but always fascinating, emerging technologies such as: smart dust, space guns, and space elevators. I also like how they apply Murphy's Law to artificial intelligence. You just know that can't end well.

And I love how they connect SETI with the reason why you really need to have somebody keeping an eye on you. Check out this quote on their Security Preserver page:

"There's a long-standing problem in astronomy called the Fermi Paradox, named for physicist Enrico Fermi who first proposed it in 1950. If the universe should be teeming with life, asked Fermi, then where are all the aliens? The question is even more vexing today: SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence with radio telescopes, has utterly failed to turn up any sign of alien life forms. Why?

One chillingly likely possibility is that, as the ability to wreak damage on a grand scale becomes more readily available to individuals, soon enough just one malcontent, or one lunatic, will be able to destroy an entire world. Perhaps countless alien civilizations have already been wiped out by single terrorists who'd been left alone to work unmonitored in their private laboratories."

So the reason we are alone in the Universe is because ET mad scientists always blow everything up before they can say "Hi." If that isn't grist for the pulp mill, I don't know what is!

The quote is actually from science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer, which the Lifeboat Foundation uses to illustrate their point about how there should be debate about the role of surveillance in the future.

One very interesting (heck they are all interesting) LF program is the AI Shield. One of the greatest threats we may face is the age-old problem of Unintended Consequences:

"Consider the simple case of an AGI that has been given the uncontroversial goal of eradicating malaria. A reasonable human expectation would be that such an AI would complete its goal by conventional means: perhaps by developing a new anti-malarial drug, or by initiating a program of mosquito control. The problem is that there are many other ways of eradicating malaria, some of which are undesirable. For example, an AGI might choose to eradicate malaria by eradicating all mammals."

Thankfully, The Lifeboat Foundation is on the job to avoid just those kind of situations. That may be bad news  for HAL, Colossus, and Sky-Net, but good news for us. Umm, assuming you aren't an artificially intelligent silicon-based life form. And if you are, please like my Facebook page.

Weird Wednesday - The Flying Wombat

Welcome to Weird Wednesday. Today we feature what I think is one of the most surprising cars of all time: The 1938 Phantom Corsair. If there was ever a real-life Pulp Hero-mobile, this is it.

It was nicknamed The Flying Wombat, due to the part it played in a 1938 movie, and you can bet I'll be having some pulp adventure character flying down a moonlit midnight road in this baby.

I debated whether it was actually weird enough to be featured in a Weird Wednesday. But imagine how wild it would have seemed to other motorists who pulled up next to the Flying Wombat in 1938! Designed by Rust Heinz, an heir to the famous ketchup fortune, and Maurice Schwartz, the Phantom Corsair was supposed to be the Motor Car of Tomorrow.

It had such futuristic features as air-conditioning, push-button doors, electric 4-speed automatic transmission, front-wheel drive, tinted non-glare windshield, aircraft-style instrument panel with over 20 dials and switches, a radio with dual speakers, and a 4.7 liter V8 engine. And it could comfortably seat a hero and five sidekicks while racing along at 115 mph with no wind noise.

But sadly, it was not to be. Rust Heinz died shortly after the first car was completed, and plans to put the design into production were dropped. We can only wonder how history might have been changed if the Flying Wombat had been able to compete with the likes of Cadillac, Nash and Studebaker.

For some really cool eye candy, check out these amazing pics of the Flying Wombat.

Today you can find the one and only Phantom Corsair in the biggest little city in the world, at the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada.

Weird Wednesday - The Lenticular Reentry Vehicle

Imagine that you wake up early one morning in the 1970's. You walk into your kitchen, which is filled with avocado green & mustard yellow appliances. Your space-age Mr. Coffee machine has already percolated a nice cup of joe. You take a sip and set the cup down on the bright orange countertop. You smile and look forward to the adventure of the coming day. For you are an astronaut in the Space Bomber Force, and today's the day you will ride a flying saucer to outer space.

This was the scenario dreamed up by cold war planners in the 1960's. The US Air Force was considering the use of a top secret orbital weapons system way before Star Wars was even a glimmer in George Lucas' eye. The command post for this "Minuteman in space" concept was the Lenticular Reentry Vehicle, also known as the Manned Bombardment and Control Vehicle.

This  little known piece of spacecraft history was kept secret for decades. Details are sketchy, since only bits and pieces of this project have been declassified. The LRV had a crew of four and probably would have used the Apollo Saturn V to boost it into orbit. Then it would park in the vicinity of several weapons platforms, each containing clusters of thermonuclear missiles. The job of the LRV crew was to scrub off alien "Moscow or Bust" graffiti, check for meteor holes, top off the fuel, and otherwise make sure the ultimate doomsday machine was in perfect, shiny working order. And, of course, they had to be ready to push the big red LAUNCH button if the wrong people decided to go all Dr. Strangelove. Then after six weeks, they'd hand off the keys to armageddon to the next shift, and return to earth in their saucer.

Who knows, if a few quantum variables had gone a bit differently, we might have had Air Force flying saucers going back and forth to a nuclear sword of Daedalus Damocles hanging over planet earth. The storylines we could have with that are endless. You could have an alien wander by and mess with the minds of the crew. Or maybe one of them goes crazy after too many weeks of never-ending games of Yahtzee. Or maybe there's a Crimson Tide scenario where a solar storm interrupts a message that says "This is a t___. Get ready to L___." Then our hapless crew needs to decide if they are supposed to start a nuclear war, end it, or just have lunch.

One real-life possibility is that the LRV actually reached the prototype stage, and could account for some "UFO" sightings. There are even claims that debris from a crashed LRV was found in Australia. Maybe the LRV actually made it off  the drawing board and routinely makes trips to the secret base on the dark side of the moon. Only the janitor at Area-51 knows for sure.

With the imminent retirement of the Space Shuttle, maybe we should revive the flying saucer that almost was, and bring back the LRV. Only without the potential nuclear winter part.

Here's to the LRV. It may have a boring name, but it sure looks cool. What other weird things do you think will be eventually declassified?

Weird Thursday - Here Come The Anomalocaridids

Today's weirdness is a make-good. Due to an increased workload in the CDJ (cool day job) and final preparations for the June 1st release of Mythik Imagination #1, ye ole' Mythik Blog has taken a back seat. But never fear, weirdness junkies, for we have a special Thursday edition of Weird Wednesday.

Behold, the Anomalocaridid! It would certainly seem to fit the part of a devious alien mother-ship occupant intent on summer blockbuster box-office domination. Actually, it is believed to be the world's largest predator in the late Cambrian and early Ordovician periods, about 472 - 542 million years ago.

The fearsome looking Anomalocaridid might have been up to 6 feet long and was at the very top of the food chain until more advanced creatures such as the way cool Sea Scorpion knocked it into oblivion.

But maybe it didn't quite happen that way. Maybe the Anomalocardids evolved and decided they needed a change of scenery from their muddy ocean floor abode. Possibly tired of dining on starfish, mollusks and the occasional crustacean, maybe they decided on the stars as their destination. After waving goodbye those silly Sea Scorpions and their ilk, could our wily Anomalocardids have tested out their newly invented hyper-drive? And now, after all these years, maybe they've come back to check out the old neighborhood and perhaps experiment on a few cows and express their artistic abilities in wheat fields.

Or not.

So the next time you are feasting on some succulent shrimp, just remember: 500 million years ago, the roles could have been reversed.

Weird Wednesday - The Voynich Manuscript

Elvish script?

Happy Weirdsday! Today's tidbit of weirdness is the controversial and extremely mysterious Voynich Manuscript. Take a look for yourself at the Yale University Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and see if you can decipher it.

While the true origins (and purpose) of the book are unknown, it is believed to have been written in the 15th or 16th century. It is divided into six parts, including a botanical section, astral charts, bizarre interconnecting tubes & miniature women, pharmaceutical drawings, and of course cryptic (and so far undeciphered) text.

Suspected authors include Roger Bacon and John Dee, a couple of chaps fully capable of mysterious weirdness. The book bopped all around Europe for hundreds of years, and there are large gaps in its history.  It has been owned by an alchemist, the Jesuits, and Ethel Lillian Voynich (author of The Gadfly and daughter of George Boole, the inventor of Boolean Logic, without which you would not have the computer you are looking at right now,) before finally ending up at Yale University.

Multiple universes connected by wormholes?

Theories:
A navy cryptogropher believes it was written by more than one person. Other theorists believe it is a hoax, filled with meaningless gibberish. Yet another school of thought believes it is far too sophisticated to be just a simple 15th century hoax.

Another idea is that the real information is contained in microscopic markings in the letters themselves. Or maybe it is really an invented alphabet for a known language.

And what about all those crazy pictures and the little women?

Maybe it is a step by step guide for the construction of a hyper-dimensional star gate.

So come on and figure that thing out. I want to know what the heck it is!

Weird Wednesday - Coral Castle

Today we look at some weirdness in the Sunshine State.  Florida is regarded by AOL as America's Weirdest State.  Then again, that is AOL talking... Anyway, weirdest or not, Florida does have some weird things. One of my favorites is Coral Castle.

Built by Edward Leedskalnin over the span of nearly three decades, Coral Castle (originally called Rock Gate Park by Leedskalnin) consists of massive stone structures with an average weight of about 15 tons each. The largest stone is 30 tons and the tallest is 25 feet tall. Coral Castle merely laughed when Hurricane Andrew huffed and puffed in vain in 1992.

The question, of course, is how one frail man, working alone by lantern light in the dead of night, was able to move such gigantic stones. Leedskalnin simply said that he had discovered the secrets of the pyramids. He was also supposedly cured of tuberculosis with the aid of magnets and sold pamphlets about magnetic currents. Did he invent some amazing gizmo that levitated 50,000 pound rocks with ease?

Or, maybe he just had a remarkable engineering talent that combined single-minded determination with preternational patience and a genius's understanding of the potential of levers and pulleys.

Unfortunately, Mr. Leedskalnin died in 1951 and never revealed his secret. Coral Castle will long be a moment to his amazing achievements, whether accomplished by anti-gravity rays, aliens, or good old human ingenuity and elbow grease.

How do you think Coral Castle was built?

Weird Wednesday - Antarctic Snow Cruiser

Staying with last week's snowy, Antarctic theme, today we have the world famous Antarctic Snow Cruiser. Built in 1939, it finally made its Antarctic debut in early 1940. Here are some specs:

0-60: Don't ask.
Top Speed: 30 mph
Size: 55 feet long, 19 feet wide & 16 feet high
Weight: 75,000 pounds
Range: 5,000 miles

Cool included options are a nifty heating system, a machine shop, and a kitchen that converts to a darkroom. This 4x4 snow beast was powered by a total of six (!) powerplants: two diesel engines and four electric motors (one for each wheel.) And if that isn't enough for you, the ultimate option is an attached 5-passenger airplane. All this was only $300,000 ($4,658,517.17 adjusted for inflation.)

Unfortunately it didn't work quite as advertised. It's greatest journey was only about 92 miles, and that was traveling backwards. Apparently, nobody realized that skinny, bald tires (even if they are 10 feet tall) are not a great idea on snow and ice. Heck, I even figured that out with an old VW Bug and didn't need $300,000 to test the concept.

All that doesn't stop the Antarctic Snow Cruiser from being very cool, though. Some real science was accomplished with the ASC as its crew measured cosmic rays, took occasional ice core samples and conducted seismologic experiments. But funding was cancelled due to WW2, and that was the end of the coolest RV of all time.  Or was it?

It seems that after the project was cancelled, the ASC was just abandoned intact, like some ghost ship, a museum-like time capsule of cutting edge 1940 technology & pop culture. It has been lost and found a few times since then, but at the moment it is still lost. Depending on which side of the crack it was on when part of the Ross Ice Shelf broke off in the 1960's, it could still be buried in the ice somewhere, or it could be at the bottom of the ocean.

I was going to do a hilariously clever bit about Clever Hero and Helpful Sidekick who happen to be stranded in Antarctica and somehow manage to find the Snow Cruiser and use it to escape, but...  Something tugged at the back of my mind about how that seemed familiar.

I did some nosing around on the ol' interwebs, and sure enough, apparently the ASC makes an appearance in a Clive Cussler novel.  I shouldn't be surprised.  It's too bad, but I'll have to cross the Snow Cruiser off my list of Electro-Diesel-Punk story ideas.

Hopefully next week we can venture away from the polar regions and find some warmer weirdness!

Weird Wednesday - Lake Vostok

Let's take a journey to the frigid wasteland of Antarctica.  Like the cold?  Imagine -132°F!  The coldest temperature ever recorded on our humble little planet also happens to be right above one of the true last frontiers on Earth:

Lake Vostok, a freshwater underground body of water the size of Lake Ontario, lies beneath 4 kilometers of ice. What's the big deal? I go ice fishing all the time, you might say.  Well it could be "one of the biological finds of the millennium."

The ancient body of water is considered a "fossil lake" and the water has been undisturbed for 10 to 25 million years.  It is like a doorway into the dim, distant past, and nobody really knows what might be down there.

Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory think conditions in Lake Vostok could be similar to a hypothesized underground water ocean on Jupiter's moon Europa.  And if you've ever read Arthur C. Clarke, you know what could happen to Europa.

The mysterious lake is the center of controversy, with debate over whether humans should risk contaminating such a pristine environment in order to study it.  There's also the possibility that whatever lives in the lake (if anything) could be dangerous, because the modern world might not have any immunity to organisms that are millions of years old.

Whether the lake contains Godzilla eggs or is connected to a certain Loch in Scotland or is just a big, dark, empty ice puddle, it is definitely something you should keep your eye on.  Who knows what might happen if and when we probe its icy depths.

If your pockets are nearly as deep as the ancient lake, check out the book The Antarctic Subglacial Lake Vostok: Glaciology, Biology and Planetology by Igor A. Zotikov.

I have to admit, I haven't been willing to spring for the 128 bucks.  If you do, let me know how it is!

Should we leave Lake Vostok alone?  Or dare we take the risk and explore it?  What do you think?

Wednesday Weird - April 20, 2011

Today marks the first of a weekly series that will examine interesting (or maybe even weird) real life things that could also spark ideas for possible SF/F stories.

From Idea #41 in Ye Ol' Idea List, we have the Georgia Guidestones. Erected over 30 years ago in rural Georgia at the behest of a mysterious individual known only as R.C. Christian, this enigmatic monument purports to be "...guidestones to An Age of Reason."

The guidestones weigh in at about 120 tons, stand 18 feet tall, and provide 10 helpful tips on achieving an "Age of Reason" in eight languages.  My favorite is #7: "Avoid petty laws and useless officials."  Tip #1 is somewhat more sinister: "Maintain humanity at 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature." Hmm, that would seem to leave most of us 6,800,000,000 people out of balance.  Although I suppose if some non-existent planet-X destroys most of the world in 2012, then you've got built in balance right off the bat.

And, if some post 2012 onlooker has been away long enough not to understand the 10 tips in 8 languages, he/she/it can always check out the smaller messages written in Sanskrit, Classical Greek, Babylonian and Egyptian Hieroglyphs.

Conspiracy theories about the true purpose of the guidestones range from the predictable "they are Satanic," to something to do with the New World Order, to a novel idea somehow tying them with the world's tallest building.  On the other side of the coin, Yoko Ono thinks they are cool.

The guidestones also serve as a handy sundial.

The usefulness of a 120 ton rock Instruction Book of Reason may be up for debate now, but only time will tell...

I had planned on a couple of other weird tidbits, but sadly time is running out.  Hopefully they will last until next Wednesday and not become un-weird in the meantime.

Finally, just to counteract the weirdness or at least put things in perspective (which can be weird in its own right) here is a great resource for learning about how the universe works: Ask An Astronomer.

And if you are worried about impending weirdness of impending apocalypses, then check out 2012 Doom and breath a sigh of relief.

Have a Weird Wednesday!