Our mission: To boldly avoid places no man has gone before
Published 11:36 pm Monday, December 17, 2007
“Avoid black holes.” That’s what an astrophysicist in New York advises, based on a new report by NASA about a black hole that’s shooting a jet of deadly radiation at a smaller neighboring galaxy.
If this were an episode of “Star Trek,” the intrepid crew would get sucked toward certain death in the radiation stream, then find themselves forced to fight their evil doppelgangers from another dimension to get the dilithium crystals they need to escape.
In the process, the transporter would fail, the shields would fall to 60 percent as soon as the enemy looked at them, and Capt. Kirk might very well be drugged and then seduced by someone wearing a minimum of clothing.
“Rodents of Unusual Size? I don’t believe they exist.” So says Westley in “The Princess Bride,” just before he’s knocked flat by a giant rat.
It turns out that rodents of unusual size don’t exist only in movies. Scientists found what they believe to be a new species in an Indonesian jungle — one that’s five times the size of your average city rat and apparently unafraid of people.
Let’s hope country rat doesn’t decide to hop a ship and come for a visit.
