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Thursday, July 31, 2008

Dealing in Books

This is a very literate community, lots of smart people. So occasionally we will find requests for rare books. Well, that got me thinking -- what does a rare book dealer look like?

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Monday, July 28, 2008

Why the Maplewood Bear Crossed the Delaware River

People have been asking what our late-departed bear was doing in Pennsylvania.

Rising Costs Affect All Sectors of the Economy

A urgent meeting of the association of tooth fairies, toenail fairies, and tooth fairies for men is held in Minneapolis to discuss rising cost of services.

More of My Neighbors

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Fishy Complained About His Lack of Visibility

I'm just saying -- sometimes, its better to go unnoticed.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Fishy's New Venture

Robotic Framistan

Apparently, one cannot not keep a living Framistan (even if they are legally caught). So Mem has commissioned me to develop the first robotic Framistan.

My Good Friend Tom is Apparently Morphing, Again

Mem's Framistan

Sorry, Mem. I didn't realize that your Framistan was from the Northern Region.

News Flash: Army to Use Live Pigs in Exercises

Saturday, July 19, 2008

The Conflict Starts

OHSA Approved Ballet

I went to the ballet recently and it got me to thinking. Why haven't the caring folks at OHSA paid any attention to the obvious hazards of this demanding and potentially life-threatening occupation?

Scarlet is Leaving

Friday, July 18, 2008

In the Beginning

The Story of Defcon

Like many great sagas we will start this story with the ending and establish how the Sauce King got here in Prequels. I mean, like, it worked for George Lucas, didn't it?

Introducing Some of My Neighbors

The folks in my town lead wonderful lives both real and over the Internet. As a service to my readers, I plan to introduce some of them from time to time so you can start following their adventures as well.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

New Friends at the Playground

It seems that one of our neighboring towns has a playground built on top of an old cemetary. This makes for the most interesting of playmates for our kiddies.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Preschool Drive

My neighbors are very busy folks who must multi-task to get everything done. So it was not surprising to hear that one of them was looking for someone to drive her toddler to preschool. So that got me to thinking -- what does a preschool drive look like?

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Scientists Discover When Sex First Appeared

According to National Geographic, Scientists have discovered that Funisia dorothea, tubular invertebrates which lived over 565 million years ago in what is now an ancient seabed in the South Australian outback, were the first to engage in sex. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080401-first-sex.html

Maplewood's Own Black Bear Cut Down In the Prime of It's Life

Monday, July 14, 2008

Kittys and Boa Constrictors Do Not Mix

Diversity

My town prides itself on diversity. However, some residents felt that this diversity should be extended to every facet of the town's existence, block by block (if need be) and suggested that a town ordinance could be adopted to make this mandatory.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Product Comparison -- GPS

Every once in awhile I do product comparisons as a public service to my readers:

Community Drug Testing

Recently, there have been news reports that communities are looking at testing sewage to determine the level of drug use by their citizens. This leads to the obvious:

Global Warming

Everyone seems to think that Global Warming is the sole product of man's profligate use of carbon based fuels, but what if?

Baby Rules

On one of the message boards on which I have frequented, a healthy discourse ensued as to whether it was right to have a baby if you can't afford a nanny.

Friday, July 11, 2008

Delmar Accepts the Challenge!

Hexapus

Scientists have recently discovered a six-legged octopus, apparently a new species. This had me thinking, what is a Hexapus to do?

Deer Culling

Recently, the suburban county in which I live decided to sponsor a deer kill. This, of course, raised considerable concern amongst the residents of the reservation.

Animals Have Feelings Too.....

My Friend Delmar Celebrates Recent Court Decision

Summer Clam Bake

Even Whales Like Happy Meals

Why this blog?

The following article got me to thinking that there may well be a parallel universe where conventional rules did not hold. I found that world in the Internet, where normal people suddenly let go of all conventions and even animals do not behave as humans may want them to. With that insight, I started posting my periodic cartoons depicting that "There is Strangeness in the Universe."


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Wednesday, 13 November, 2002, 14:40 GMT
Mirror matter mystery
Eros, Nasa
Eros: Possible site of mirror matter impacts



Two Australian scientists believe they have found evidence of a parallel universe of strange matter within our own Solar System.

Dr Robert Foot and Dr Saibal Mitra report that close-up observations of the asteroid Eros by the Near-Shoemaker probe indicate it has been splattered by so-called "mirror matter".

Mirror matter is not anti-matter, it is altogether weirder. It is somehow a "reflection" of normal matter, a sort of parallel series of particles required to restore the balance of the Universe.

Sounds far-fetched - some believe so. However, experiments are underway to confirm or deny the existence of this strange, potentially significant but as yet undetected component of the cosmos.

Cosmic balance

Mirror matter is a hypothetical form of matter that restores nature's flawed left-right symmetry.

Laws of nature, such as the rules that govern the interactions of fundamental particles, show a high degree of symmetry except that some laws are not the same when reflected in a hypothetical mirror.

Pools of dust may be impact sites
Blue dirt: Pools of dust may be impact sites
This means that elementary particles display a preference for left over right. In a way, the Universe is left-handed. Why? Nobody knows.

Many physicists are happy with this idea believing that in the first instants of the Big Bang everything was perfectly symmetrical. Only when the cosmos cooled did it become asymmetric, with a difference emerging between left and right.

But some scientists do not accept this. They maintain that the Universe has a left-right balance because there exists "mirror matter" - for every known particle there is a mirror particle that restores the cosmic balance.

Dark matter

Mirror matter would produce its own light but we would not be able to see it because mirror matter only interacts with our matter via gravity.

Dr Robert Foot believes that mirror matter would have been made in abundance in the Big Bang and that it is all around us but we can't see it.

University of Melbourne
Mirror man Dr Robert Foot
"There could be mirror matter stars, planets and galaxies out there," he told BBC News Online.

"In fact, some think that the unseen so-called "dark matter" of the Universe could actually be mirror matter," he adds.

"Mirror matter is perfect to explain dark matter. It's dark and can only be detected through its gravity."

Dr Foot believes he has found evidence that it is here, closer than we believed, and that it had had a measurable effect on our spaceprobes.

Mysterious force

In October 2000, the Near-Shoemaker spacecraft lightly touched down on the 13-by-13-by-33-km (8 by 8 by 20 miles) Eros asteroid. It was the first time a probe had landed on an asteroid.

Its close scrutiny of Eros revealed many strange features - such as flat-bottomed craters filled with a peculiar bluish dust, and a puzzling lack of small craters.

Unexplained by conventional understanding, Dr Foot believes that mirror matter provides an answer.

He calculates that small objects containing mirror matter could have struck the asteroid and left behind precisely the same scars that are seen. Indeed, he says there is no other credible explanation.

He also calculates that mirror matter may explain the mysterious force that acts on both the Pioneer 10 and 11 deep spaceprobes.

Distant probes

Launched in 1972, the Pioneers are leaving the Solar System in opposite directions. Detailed analysis of their trajectory indicates that they are both subject to a tiny, unexplained force that is slowing them down.

Dr Foot believes that mirror matter exerting a drag on the Pioneers could be to blame.

Mysterious force: Pioneer 10
Mysterious force: Pioneer 10
"How else can you explain that both Pioneers, on opposite ends of the Solar System, experience the same force pushing in the same direction?" Dr Foot asks.

In a research paper to be published shortly, Drs Foot and Mitra suggest that mirror matter may even have struck the Earth.

He singles out three possible events: the 1908 Tunguska impact in Siberia and low-altitude, low-velocity fireballs seen in Spain in 1994 and in Jordan in 2001.

"Mirror matter could also explain these events," he told BBC News Online.

Future experiments

Many scientists dismiss mirror matter as wild speculation but even the sceptics will have cause for thought if the latest experiments from the European Centre for Nuclear Research (Cern) are to be believed.

Experiments involving so-called ortho-positronium - an arrangement in which an electron orbits a positron (its antimatter equivalent) - show that it decays slightly faster than can be explained.

This could be due, says Dr Foot, to the electrons changing fleetingly into mirror matter and then back again.

Experiments at Cern and in Moscow hope to determine in the next year or so if mirror matter really does exist.

Dr Robert Foot is from the University of Melbourne; Dr Saibal Mitra is from the University of Amsterdam.

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