Year: 2015

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Man Invents Warp Drive in his Garage

What would you say if I told you that there is a guy in Omaha working on building a warp drive—as in “Mr. Sulu, ahead warp factor 2” kind of warp drive? When we are dealing with science this deep we like to get an explanation from guys like Doctor Michio Kaku. Is warp speed even possible?

OK… so maybe it is. If it is, is it available to us in this lifetime. NASA has apparently been exploring this, but we are pulling for Dave Pares, a professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha, has been working on the warp problem out of his garage! His Space Warp Project is a privately funded effort that may actually get this done. Here is a video where Professor Pares talks about his vision. (It’s a little more low-key that Dr. Kaku.)

So, does this mean we’ll all be travelling at warp speeds soon? We were all promised jet packs and flying cars, but we haven’t seen much from them. We’re optimistic, though. There’s nothing more inspiring than mad science in a personal lab. If we all send a little good mojo maybe we can get off this rock and start exploring the galaxy properly!

 

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Dropping From The Sky In Alaska

When Charles Fort wrote his Book of the Damned, he talked about a number of strange events where things rained out of the sky. There were black rains, red rains, rains of fish, rains of frogs! Apparently that sort of thing still happens. This time it’s bizarre eel-like fish called lampreys in Alaska. (This is not like the rain of spiders that we reported recently.)

There were simple explanations in Fort’s time about all the bizarre goings on, which is what prompted him to write his book in the first place. Here, the official explanation is that seagulls are digging these up and dropping them around. Hopefully we can look forward to photos and video of these bomber birds in action. In the mean time we will also wonder if the lampreys are simply collecting in the Super-Sargasso Sea, the dimension of lost things that Fort proposed.

There must be a lot of keys there…and socks.

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Godzilla receives Japanese citizenship

We love that the Japanese are weird. The give us the best game shows and the most disturbing horror. We’re not sure what to think about this one, though.

Photo of Godzilla receiving an award sash
Shizuo Kambayashi—AP
Godzilla receives a sash of “Shinjuku-ward tourism ambassador” from the Kabuki-cho Shopping Area Promotion Association Chief Director Mototsugu Katagiri of Tokyo’s Shinjuku-ward during its awards ceremony in Tokyo, April 9, 2015.

Japan has granted Godzilla full citizenship. For years, Godzilla has risen from the depths and laid Tokyo in ruins. True, he only did it on his own a few times and was often defending them from other monsters, but still, he’s done a lot of damage over the years. Perhaps granting him citizenship means he’ll be able to pay some of that back in taxes.

Of course, this brings up some important questions. What about all of the other monsters? How many monsters who have thrilled and frightened us over the years are left without any support at all? At the Museum of the Weird we have to keep King Kong hidden away upstairs! Many others are of unknown status. Will the United States finally bring reform that lets the monsters we love call this country their home? Time will tell, but we look for a time when there is equality for all monsters.

You can enjoy our collection of monsters at our sister store, Sfanthor. Get a super pass and enjoy both sites for one great price!

unversal_monsters-citizenship

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Armchair spelunking

As shown in our recent post about weird inventions, technology goes in lots of different directions. In this case, technology will take you somewhere wonderful without every having to leave your chair.

Use your mouse to explore Vietnam's Son Doong cave
Use your mouse to explore Vietnam’s Son Doong cave

National Geographic has created a stunning interactive tool that will let you explore this wonder of nature, walking through each zone and looking around as though you were there. The 360° views let you look all around and up into the dizzying heights of the cave.

If you like armchair exploring, you’re not just relegated to tours. the PhET project provides simulations for physics, biology, chemistry and other sciencey-wiencey stuff.

Do you know a virtual adventure that we should know about? Share it with us!

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Cloning dinosaurs

Hundreds of thousands poured into theatres this weekend to experience Jurassic World. While movie-goers are excited, not everyone is thrilled about the film. Some palaeontologists are preparing themselves for all of the stupid questions they will have to answer about dinosaur cloning. So, do we need to worry about a Jurassic Park disaster?

https://youtu.be/duTJP-ePewU

There you have it. Based on what we currently understand about cloning, we don’t have any way to regenerate a dinosaur. We’re just going to have to rely on time travel. Of course, there are other historic creatures that are within the reasonable DNA half-life, including Neanderthal Man. In this interview with Spiegel from several years ago, scientist, George Church, discusses the plausibility of cloning a Neanderthal Man and other topics that may shock or delight you. Church denied that he was seeking an “Adventurous Woman,”  as some reported, to be a surrogate for a baby Neanderthal. We don’t know if he didn’t get a volunteer or if there were too many. (Can you just imagine the email?)

Photo of Alvin the bearded dragon
Alvin, a bearded dragon, is our official lucky lizard, live and on display

Are these places where science dare not go? If someone discovers a way around the half-life issue or wants to explore brining back a woolly mammoth or Neanderthal should we be worried or buy tickets? As host to the one and only Iceman, we would love to have a pet dinosaur. I guess we’ll have to be content to enjoy our lucky lizard, Alvin, on display in the museum.

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Falling with style

It’s a shame that some inventions never caught on. Imagine how stylish flying would have been if the Hoop-Skirt parachute idea, described in the January 1911 edition of Popular Mechanics, had caught on. It’s possible that the manly men at the time balked at the idea of being seen in something that could at any time resemble a skirt. It’s also possible that the idea didn’t really work and they would simply plummet to their death… leaving a good-looking corpse.

Fiske Reading Machine
Portable library, 1920s style

Another idea in the early 20th century was the first book killer. Long before gadgets like computer tablets, inventors already had their sights set on fixing the problem of carrying around cumbersome books. The June 1922 edition of Scientific American shows one solution. The Fiske Reading Machine printed books in tiny print and provided a modified magnifying glass that you could hold up to your eye to read. One can only imagine how this would work on a bumpy carriage ride.

It’s easy to laugh at these things now, but you never know how the next great thing will appear. It might seem like the famous Inside the Egg Egg Scrambler by Ronco. It might end up being sliced bread.

Think that egg scrambler idea is dead? You haven’t been watching Kickstarter. People will do just anything to avoid cleaning that fork and bowl!

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Do you take this corpse…

By greyloch from Washington, DC, area, U.S.A. (The Corpse Bride) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
In Tim Burton’s film, Corpse Bride, Victor Van Dort finds himself unwittingly married to a woman who has been dead for years. Weird fantasy stuff, eh? Not necessarily. The practice of marrying the dead is quite real and more common than you might think.

Called posthumous marriage, the practice of marrying the deceased is legal in France, with similar customs in India, Sudan and China. In France, the custom dates back to World War I, where a few women were married by proxy to soldiers who had died a few weeks earlier. The living party must be able to demonstrate that there was clear intention for the couple to be married. The Guardian reports a posthumous wedding in France as late as 2009.

It’s not just women. The Daily Mail reports the wedding of Thai TV producer, Chadil Deffy, who married his girlfriend, killed in a car accident.

These stories are touching and heart-wrenching all at once. Such a ceremony could provide closure to someone who has been left behind, completing an important part of life that would otherwise have been left unfinished. Of course, it might go deeper. In my travels I had a fascinating conversation with a widow who told me she was still in regular contact with her husband’s spirit who stayed around her house and continued to participate in her life.

Posthumous marriage is not recognized in the United States, though there are cases where people have tried it anyway. Kirsten Smolensky examines Rights of the Dead in the Hofstra Law Review.

Have you been to a strange wedding? Share it with us.

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You can see our museum, but then we have to kill you.

When visiting Austin, you must come by the Museum of the Weird to experience first-hand some of the strangest artifacts on earth. When we visit Washington DC, we’re going to go see the International Spy Museum.

This amazing place houses a collection of items and stories of espionage around the world and from the beginning of recorded history. See the stories of famous men and women considered above suspicion—and doubly effective as spies. A Spy’s Eye View of the Civil War is a gallery to highlight the significant role espionage played during the War Between the States. They even provide Interactive Spy Experiences, where you get to see first hand what it’s like to be a spy.

Would you be interested in interactive experiences through the Museum of the Weird? What kind?

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What is that in the sky?!

Imagine driving down the road and you see this up ahead.

640px-Saucer_cloud_over_Campbell_Mesa,_AZ
By Brady Smith; Coconino National Forest [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
You might feel that we were being invaded, but what you see is an unusual formation called a “lenticular cloud.” These clouds form in situations where some sort of large object (like a mountain or a building) disturbs the air flow and creates an eddie of air. When the conditions are right, clouds form in these eddies and take on a bizarre saucer shape that looks like something from the film, Independence Day.

These weird clouds may account for some UFO reports. Here are some more amazing examples.

512px-Lenticular_clouds_and_Mount_Hotaka_from_Mount_Otensho_1994-06-25
Lenticular clouds and Mount Hotaka from Mount Otensho 1994-06-25
By Alpsdake (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
New-Mexico-Lenticular
By Brandy Jenkins [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons
Lenticular Clouds over Cagliari
Lenticular Clouds over Cagliari
By fdecomite [CC BY 2.0]
 Of course, not all reports can be explained by clouds. Soon we’ll examine some of the more detailed reports and the organization that constantly tracks and investigates them.

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AC vs DC: the Battle’s Not Over

You’ve probably heard about the epic battle between inventors, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla about how electricity would be delivered to the masses. If not, this video will catch you up.

As the video shows, Edison’s campaign was pretty grim. He was convinced that AC power was unsafe and publicly electrocuted a number of animals, including an aging elephant, to prove it. AC had advantages for cheaply delivering power over long distances, so it ultimately won out…or did it.

In this article, Will Tesla Batteries Force Home Wiring to go Low Voltage?, innovations in battery technologies developed by Tesla Motors may force homes and appliances to rewire for DC to be more efficient. The irony of this is staggering. A company inspired by and named for Nikola Tesla may reverse a long-standing convention and get us closer to Edison’s original vision for power distribution.

It makes one wonder if their battle may continue wherever they may be, if they might look at what their creations have wrought and continue to keep score.

You might also be interested in Edison’s device for contacting the dead. We’ll be examining this in more detail soon.