Satellite Spots Massive Object Hidden Under the Frozen Wastes of Antarctica (thesun.co.uk)

schwit1 quotes a report from The Sun: Scientists believe a massive object which could change our understanding of history is hidden beneath the Antarctic ice. The huge and mysterious "anomaly" is thought to be lurking beneath the frozen wastes of an area called Wilkes Land. It stretches for a distance of 151 miles across and has a maximum depth of about 848 meters. Some researchers believe it is the remains of a truly massive asteroid which was more than twice the size of the Chicxulub space rock which wiped out the dinosaurs. If this explanation is true, it could mean this killer asteroid caused the Permian-Triassic extinction event which killed 96 percent of Earth's sea creatures and up to 70 percent of the vertebrate organisms living on land.This "Wilkes Land gravity anomaly" was first uncovered in 2006, when NASA satellites spotted gravitational changes which indicated the presence of a huge object sitting in the middle of a 300 mile wide impact crater.

Comments

Here we go

[Isendur]

So, "Alien" or "The Thing"? What are your bets guys?

Re:Here we go

[Z80a]

I'll bet on lavos due the catchy tune.

Re:Here we go

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it's black, and its edges have the ratio 1:4:9.

Re:Here we go

[Anonymous Coward]

City of the Elder Things beyond the Mountains of Madness

Re:Here we go

[Smidge204]

Adam, the First Angel.

Brace for (Second) Impact!
=Smidge=

Re:Here we go

[mindwhip]

Those pesky Russians...

Re:Here we go

[Mr D from 63]

Most likely a large frozen nest of Godzillas.

Re:Here we go

[elrous0]

What are your bets guys?

I'm betting that Kurt Russell faked drinking from that bottle and it was actually a molotov cocktail.

Re:Here we go

[Bigbutt]

Cthulhu. "Beyond The Mountains of Madness"

ia ia fhtagn!

[John]

Re:Here we go

[rsmith-mac]

What are your bets guys?

A Stargate, of course. Those silly things have a tendency to show up in the Antarctic.

Re:Here we go

[sudon't]

"...a huge object sitting in the middle of a 300 mile wide impact crater."

Yes, I think we can dismiss "asteroid" as too far-fetched. I mean, why would an asteroid choose to specifically land in the middle of an impact crater? Now, a Nazi base for alien flying saucer landings? It's the only thing that makes sense.

Re: Here we go

[PFritz21]

Somebody call Richard Dean Anderson and get SG-1 together to go through and battle Anubis...

Re:Here we go

[breech1]

So, "Alien" or "The Thing"? What are your bets guys?

Neither. It's where the Vorlons are hanging out while they create human telepaths. Next couple decades outta be interesting.

Re:Here we go

[sl3xd]

Cthulhu wasn't really involved in the Mountains of Madness.

Re: Here we go

[isomeme]

Mountains of Madness, dude.

Re:Here we go

[lgw]

How foolish we were to think it stopped there.

Re:Here we go

[Bigbutt]

Yea, it was more of a reference as Cthulhu is more known than the specific Mountains of Madness story.

[John]

Re:Here we go

[micahraleigh]

+1 The black wind howls for a mod point

Re:Here we go

[sl3xd]

Screw Ron Perlman. He's too good looking.

We need Clint Howard as the lead role.

Re:Here we go

[fahrbot-bot]

What are your bets guys?

Ever read Ice Station by Matt Reilly? Researchers found something under the ice in Antarctica too.

Re: Here we go

[J053]

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

Re:Here we go

[lucien86]

Maybe is was the city of R'lyeh where mighty Cthulhu and his/its brethren sleep.

Re:Here we go

[RivenAleem]

Also, there's no way an asteroid would fall UP and hit the Underside of the world.

Re:Here we go

[Maritz]

They massively fucked up by not making that a movie set in the colonial marines' Alien universe.

Obvious anomaly answers

[Anonymous Coward]

1) It's the collected lost socks and keys of the planet. They all fell to the bottom.

2) It's Cowboy Neal's porn stash.

Re:Obvious anomaly answers

[bytesex]

Yo mama!

Re:Obvious anomaly answers

[BronsCon]

So, the porn stash then?

Re:Obvious anomaly answers

[penandpaper]

*unzips*

I'm ready.

Re:Obvious anomaly answers

[wikthemighty]

Porn stash and all the, ahem, used socks...

Seriously?

[ledow]

Seriously? You linked to the fucking Sun newspaper? For a science article?

I'm done with this site.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot and the sun are pretty much on the same level.

Re: Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. BeauHD should be ashamed for posting this. While there are a lot of sources that there is, indeed, a crater buried under the ice, there are no credible sources about a massive object being detected. In fact, a lot of the posts about thr supposed object are speculating that there's either a Nazi base or a UFO buried under the ice. Although either one might make for an interesting X-Files story (and this was done in Fight the Future), there doesn't seem to be any credible science involved here. It's a bunch of lunatic conspiracy theories, with no reputable sources. BeauHD should be ashamed of posting this. It marks a new low for Slashdot.

Re:Seriously?

[bruce_the_loon]

Link to a scientific paper published last June with a decent set of arguments as to why it is more likely an impact crater than other types of geological formation. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273313440_The_Wilkes_Land_Anomaly_revisited

Re: Seriously?

[Rei]

Indeed. Large (dangerous) asteroids do not survive their descent. Ever. The largest single meteorite ever found is only 60 tonnes (Hoba meteorite), and it took exceptional circumstances for it to survive (an extremely shallow entry trajectory). If an impact is excavating a large (or even small) crater, it's turning to gas and/or plasma in the process.

Re: Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just call them "dipshits" for short.

Re:Seriously?

[frovingslosh]

Slashdot and the sun are pretty much on the same level.

No, The Sun has editors that actually edit.

Re:Seriously?

[Desler]

Political articles have been posted on Slashdot for more than a decade and a half. You must be new here if you think it's only a recent phenomenon.

Re:Seriously?

[garryknight]

I'll believe it when I see it reported in an actual newspaper.

Re:Seriously?

[garryknight]

The Sun is an average of 92.96 million miles from the truth.

Re: Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

"This site has become shit a long time ago, when it started to publish political articles and was infested by Russian trolls and Trump supporters"

Triggered. Liberals support everything unless they disagree with it. Then they support extreme measures to support stopping and banning what they disagree with. Effectively they're fucking scary people.

From your friendly centrist AC who finds all extremists fucking scary but minds their own business most of the time.

Re:Seriously?

[Cmdln Daco]

The Sun has a large circulation and a positive revenue stream.

Re: Seriously?

[naubol]

I'm sorry you were triggered. The comment you responded to didn't indicate that the person was a liberal or in support of any measures to ban anything. Possibly, you're so easily triggered that you need a safe space? I recommend a room without a laptop.

Re: Seriously?

[LynnwoodRooster]

The comment you responded to didn't indicate that the person was a liberal

"Infested by Trump supporters". I think it's safe to assume they're not very taken with the GOP right now...

Re:Seriously?

[MightyYar]

I still fondly remember this site when every single discussion dissolved into how Bush was responsible.

Re:Seriously?

[penandpaper]

So, what your saying is that it is Bush's fault and we need him back to focus the nerd rage? Well, I guess someone has to do it.

Bush is the reason why /. has Russian trolls and Trump supporters.

I feel cold inside.

Re: Seriously?

[penandpaper]

"Infested by Trump supporters".

Nah, this is just a fancy way of saying they were swooned by Trumps pussy grabbing family fun antics.

Re: Seriously?

[DutchUncle]

On the other hand, maybe something REALLY HUGE cracked the planet into the separate tectonic plates. Comparing it to the largest single meteorite that humans have found, on land, and recognized for what it was, leaves out all of the underwater area and things not recognized (assumed to be part of mountain ranges or other terrain). Random collisions might also explain why the different planets all have different axial tilts, despite being in (pretty much) the same plane of rotation around the sun. I believe that humans have a problem comprehending the immensity of forces involved and the insignificance of any particular life form.

Re:Seriously?

[MightyYar]

I feel cold inside.

Probably because the Bush recession and his cronies in the oil industry made it so you could not afford heat.

Re: Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

NAZI base is on dark-side of the Moon. Watch documentary "Iron Sky" !!

Re: Seriously?

[Notabadguy]

Are you serious? After all the other shit that BeauHD posts - to the point that intelligent readers see "posted by BeauHD" and assume a load of crap that most likely has a left-wing conspiratorial slant to it (to align with her mad social media ravings about the evils of republicans) ... ...and you draw the line at the Sun attempting to report something non-partisan about a maybe scientific thing?

Re:Seriously?

[fbobraga]

you 3 must be new here...

Re: Seriously?

[fbobraga]

I'll have you know that many ancient cultures worshiped the sun.

Nice catch

Re: Seriously?

[fbobraga]

+1 informative

Re: Seriously?

[Khyber]

"Indeed. Large (dangerous) asteroids do not survive their descent. Ever. "

Cape York Group (which when you put all the fragments together outweighs Hoba by about ten tons, with the two largest fragments coming in at nearly 52 tons combined.)
Willamette.
Mbosi.
Bacubirito.

All of those hit the earth with nuclear force and you can prove that by the stishovite found at each site. They all survived, otherwise we'd not have them in our physical possession and recorded.

Re: Seriously?

[Rei]

You're not getting that it's physically impossible for a large object to survive. "Releasing enough energy to cause mass extinctions across the entire planet" and "remaining with large pieces intact" are mutually exclusive. The "immensity of forces" is precisely the problem. It's like expecting pieces of the casing to survive the detonation of an atomic bomb. Only many orders of magnitude less likely.

As for cracking the planet into separate plates, however, that's not that far fetched; there is a legitimate (although controversial) scientific hypothesis that such an impact weakened the crust there and helped allow for Antarctica to break off. And collisions are a leading, relatively non-controversial theory to explain axial tilts - although primarily collisions during formation and potentially the late heavy bombardment.

Re:Seriously?

[lgw]

still fondly remember this site when every single discussion dissolved into how Bush was responsible.

I remember the good old days when every political argument would eventually dissolve into an fight over OSs or text editors, and it was Gates who was responsible for everything.
 

Re:Seriously?

[lgw]

Hey, at least it's more likely to be true in the Sun than the NYT or WaPo. The Sun does have some standards.

Re: Seriously?

[Rei]

Cape York is estimated as the largest ever to hit the atmosphere with survivable fragments, although Hoba is the largest intact meteorite. The parent of Cape York is estimated to have been 200 tonnes. Assuming the average asteroid impact velocity of 17 km/s (it was probably less, given that pieces survived), that's an energy of 2,89e13 joules, or 7 kilotonnes. You can technically make a nuclear bomb that weak (and thus call it "nuclear force"), but you'd generally call that a fizzle.

Chixulub, by contrast, was formed by an impact with about 100 *teratonnes* of energy. Over *10* orders of magnitude more.

Re: Seriously?

[DamnOregonian]

Chixulub impact energies make me dizzy. The energy involved, for me, is unimaginable. I wish we could see something like that hit a rocky planet just to wake people up. Preferably not THIS one. Evidence has never been enough for a large portion of Americans. They need to see it with their own eyes.

Re:Seriously?

[lgw]

I remember when JonKatz was blamed for everything!

Nowadays, it's systemd.

To be fair, everything wrong with the world is acutally systemd's fault.

Re: Seriously?

[Rei]

Indeed. A nice impact on, say, Mars would suit. With us having several decades leadtime to properly instrument it with every last piece of data gathering equipment and camera we can get our hands on, surface and orbital.

It's crazy to imagine an impactor so power that even the heat from its reentering impact debris baked away most non-sheltered life on the opposite side of the planet.

Re: Seriously?

[RockDoctor]

there is a legitimate (although controversial) scientific hypothesis that such an impact weakened the crust there and helped allow for Antarctica to break off

[citation required] I'm a professional geologist with a business interest in the tectonic history of the breakup of Gondwanaland, and I've not heard that "hypothesis" even from the kooks.

Re: Seriously?

[RockDoctor]

I wish we could see something like that hit a rocky planet just to wake people up.

Wasn't seeing the carbon-containing compounds of a larger-than-Earth area of Jupiter cooked to a toasty-black enough for people?

Nature laid on the "You're in a dangerous universe" lecture about a generation ago with SL-9. People chose to not get the message, because the message was pretty unambiguous. Hitting Venus or Mercury with something worse - say a Ceres-size impactor - wouldn't be enough to raise the attentions of most people. (I won't suggest hitting Mars - the debris would have a serious chance of hitting Earth in gigadeath tonnages.)

Re: Seriously?

[RockDoctor]

Indeed. Large (dangerous) asteroids do not survive their descent. Ever.

[list of minuscule boulders]
All of those hit the earth with nuclear force and you can prove that by the stishovite found at each site.

You're both not wrong, just talking on different scales of things. For "nuclear force" to be significantly dangerous, you're going to need to detonate a significant fraction of the planet's nuclear arsenals - say a thousand or ten megatonnes. Sure, a hundred megatonnes could kill a few people - to the nearest million. but earthquakes get near that range too. They're problems that human beings have shrugged off as temporary blips in the population growth. Bacteria are far more dangerous.

Take an intermediate - and iconic - undoubted (*) meteor impactor - the Barringer crater a.k.a Meteor Crater : size estimated at a few 10s of thousands to hundred thousand or so tonnes. Nothing identifiable as impactor material found on site. Hit at about the time that the first humans were entering North America. It couldn't even wipe out Stone Age arctic survival experts over a few % of the planets surface. Just not a dangerous thing. And nothing left on the ground from the impactor. Not even any reported isotropic traces (correct me if I'm wrong. Please. With references.).

(*) undoubted - Well, there are lunatic fringes.

Re: Seriously?

[Khyber]

"And nothing left on the ground from the impactor. Not even any reported isotropic traces (correct me if I'm wrong. Please. With references.). "

Direct satellite reference - it's not on the ground, it's BELOW the ground, according to the reading I'm getting.

I do this all day long as a lucrative hobby.

Re: Seriously?

[DutchUncle]

What happens if large objects collide *slowly* (at least, slowly with respect to each other, they could both be moving fast relative to other objects, like stock cars trading paint)? Crunch the surface layer, release lots of particulate and dust, change the spin, cause extinctions over multiple years of horribly changed weather (maybe with extra acid rain or other trace chemicals) rather than one huge explosion. I'm a computer systems engineer, not mechanical or geological; maybe I've slipped a decimal point or two on the back of this envelope.

Re: Seriously?

[RockDoctor]

So, what are your scales and what data from Landsat are you plotting there. There is no indication of your data apart from a mention of Landsat8 in your list of sources. Without the context, I'd read that as two horizontally bedded units - which you've flagged pale brown and bright green - the deeper (bright green unit) of which has been exposed by the impact. Impact melt (suevite) you've coloured purple.

Without your unit definitions, that's uninformative.

I've never needed to look at satellite data (I use a hand lens or binocular microscope), so I'm guessing that you're making certain criteria of (say) IR band brightness to colour brown, pink, green or whatever, and that you've got some correlation section elsewhere to justify these pick criteria. Or some a priori reasons for making those particular picks. Grain size and degree of fusion are things I would expect to have an effect on IR reflection spectra, which is why I'm postulating the pink-flagged unit as being the ejecta. And the spectra of this unit differs from the spectrum of shocked material from the pale-brown unit just how?

You do Landsat interpretation as a lucrative hobby? How do you make money out of that? Checking bullshit company reports so you can filter them out of people's portfolios (for a consultancy fee)?

Re: Seriously?

[Maritz]

A hypothesis is a hypothesis. Why would you cite it?

Re: Seriously?

[Khyber]

"So, what are your scales and what data from Landsat are you plotting there"

Those are iron/mineral signal readings and denote the type of iron or other mineral. Green = areas of exposed clay, basalt, marble, mica. Sand Brown areas = minor ferric iron (usually rust streaks.) Pink = Major Ferric Iron (almost always black magnetite sand.)

The entire crater is exposed clay and basalt with no iron reading. This tells me the meteorite impacted and went through the crust to some degree. Iron doesn't simply obliterate itself - it's one of the hardest things to get a fission or fusion reaction from (as in essentially impossible,) so even impacting the earth it should have still left an iron signal at the point of impact unless it went through the crust and sunk into magma.

"Grain size and degree of fusion are things I would expect to have an effect on IR reflection spectra, which is why I'm postulating the pink-flagged unit as being the ejecta."

Zooming out, the pink area only shows to the east. If you go west, you get into signals of green - exposed basalt, marble, mica, etc, which matches up with the mountain area.

"You do Landsat interpretation as a lucrative hobby? How do you make money out of that?"

People pay good money to know where to find minerals, and I make money either selling them information on where to find minerals or finding the minerals they want myself and selling it to them. I've got tourmaline, aquamarine, lapis, jade, star sapphires (from California, no less) all sorts of cryptocrystalline quartz, etc. I also use this information to plan Southern California's oldest mineralogical society's field trips (I'm their shop, trip, and events coordinator/manager.)

"Checking bullshit company reports so you can filter them out of people's portfolios (for a consultancy fee)?"

When I do that, I'm always checking the site in-person against their reports. Most of the times, they MISS things in their reports (most recent: company had me look at a location in Jurupa two days ago for double-checking the accuracy of a minerals survey report; surveyor missed listing Axinite, Fluorite, Schorl Tourmaline, and Lepidolite in their noted minerals listing - they only had rose quartz, calcite, and garnet-bearing schist listed.) The satellite readings give me an idea of what COULD be found in a location, I always personally visit the site for any intense survey work.

Re: Seriously?

[Khyber]

Constantly changing because you're a coward. You wouldn't last five seconds face-to-face against me, oh fat keyboard warrior.

Re: Seriously?

[RockDoctor]

OK, I'll rephrase the question. If someone is seriously making this proposition and expecting people to pay it any credence, then they'll have published it somewhere under their own name in order to establish priority, and at that point they'll have included the best evidence they have in support of their hypothesis, as well as pointing out any holes in competing hypotheses.

Who is proposing this hypothesis? (Like I said, I've not heard of it at the several Gondwana-themed conferences I've attended.)

Where in the professional literature did they publish it? (You could just about squeeze Scientific American or National Geographic into "the literature". Just. New Scientist or National Enquirer, no.)

If someone doesn't do these basics, then they're not serious about their idea and not worth the effort of responding to.

I'm not saying the idea is utterly lacking in merit - it's just about possible. But I suspect that it's a mis-remembered variant on the concept that the contra coup stress concentration from the Chixulub impactor led to the eruption of the Deccan LIP (Large Igneous Province). That one has been popular for decades, but it falls apart if you try to come up with some numbers to examine it, and also has fallen further apart more recently on the dating front. Though it's popular in "science reporting" (e.g. "Discovery Channel" and the like), I can't think of a single geologist who has thought enough of the idea to attach their name and professional reputation to it.

I suspect that this is another equally poorly-founded idea (if it's not the same one resurrected). I can't think of any good reasons to think it might be true, and don't particularly fancy spending the next 30 years fighting it's Hydra-like resurfacing, as one has had to do over the Chixulub-Deccan error. If someone has assembled sufficient supporting evidence to be worth publishing, then I'll consider it. But I'm not going to waste my time and effort on it because I don't think it's worthwhile. It's Rei who brought up the idea - let him do the leg work (he's well enough aware of how science works to know what is needed).

Re: Seriously?

[RockDoctor]

Interesting comments on Landsat data. I'll give that another read after making my dinner.

This is where you're missing something :

so even impacting the earth it should have still left an iron signal at the point of impact unless it went through the crust and sunk into magma.

There's an alternative interpretation you're not considering. What happens to a half million tonnes (give or take) of iron when you turn around 1.5Ã--10^13 joules of kinetic energy (Earth's orbital velocity - impact velocity may have been higher or lower) into heat underneath it? (That's abut 3.5 thousand tonnes of TNT equivalent.)

To put it mildly, the iron is dispersed.

To a good approximation, for all large astronomical impactors, the energy released on impact is sufficient to blow the impactor - and a lot of other debris - out of the temporary crater and into orbit or into long-distance ballistic trajectories. Most of the impactor is vapourised on contact with the ground - regardless of whether it is dirty ice (boiling point Meteor Crater has no significant magnetic anomaly. The impactor was - to a good approximation - dispersed over the landscape. Debris was probably not confined to the North American continent, though this was, of course, an insignificant impact. The iron finds around Meteor Crater total some hundreds or even a thousand kilos, making for an ejection efficiency of around 99.9% or higher (depending on impactor mass, obviously).

Iron doesn't simply obliterate itself - it's one of the hardest things to get a fission or fusion reaction from (as in essentially impossible,)

Kinetic energy goes to heat ; nothing exotic. With enough heat generated rapidly, it is easy to get iron (or anything else) to go to somewhere else.

Better source?

[piggz1]

Im not sure 'thesun.co.uk' is the best source for science news!

Re:Better source?

[Epeeist]

Im not sure 'thesun.co.uk' is the best source for science news!

Well at least it wasn't the Daily Mail.

Re:Better source?

[Dins]

Why not? It's named after the Sun. Which is a star. Stars are sciencey, right?

Re:Better source?

[jrq]

Weirdly, and I still can't understand why this is, but the Daily Mail actually has a really good science section.

Re:Better source?

[Cederic]

Makes a change from blaming it on scousers.

Re:Better source?

[RhettLivingston]

Im not sure 'thesun.co.uk' is the best source for science news!

At least it's not Slashdot!

Look at the bright side

[Chrisq]

Look at the bright side. It could be Superman's Fortress of Solitude

Re:Look at the bright side

[dunkelfalke]

Or it could be another giant UFO full of alien colonists missed by Mulder in 1998.

Re:Look at the bright side

[dtmos]

Wasn't that in the arctic?

Re:Look at the bright side

[jellomizer]

If true, I would be pissed off on how many times Superman could had saved the day but didn't. Where was he during 911?

Re:Look at the bright side

[DaveMikulec]

You win the internet for the rest of the year!

Re: Look at the bright side

[Petersko]

When the towers fell, I'm pretty sure Superman was in a wheelchair. Give him a break.

Re:Look at the bright side

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Nah, entrance to the stargate.

With Macguyver stuck at the bottom.

Is it Iron?

[wisebabo]

Unfortunately I'm not a mining expert but isn't much (most?) of the iron available to humanity basically meteorites? I mean most of the iron that the earth formed with sank to the core since it is (much?) denser than the surrounding molten rock?

And wasn't this thing detected because it was a gravity or mass anomaly? A chunk of iron that big could be quite valuable! Here comes the despoiling of the Antarctic, a job made possible by global warming and the "who cares" approach to the environment of our soon to be in office leader.

Re: Is it Iron?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although there is a concentration of mass at the center of the proposed Wilkes Land Crater, as discovered about ten years ago, it's not the remnants of an asteroid. Instead, it's believed to be due to upwelling of molten rock from the mantle as a result of the impact.

Re: Is it Iron?

[Rei]

Yep - just like the Sudbury deposit. Probably a great spot to mine, if it wasn't buried beneath ice and in an area where mining is illegal. Large impact crater floors tend to stay molten for so long that they stratify, so you can find portions of the deposit rich in different minerals, such as nickel, copper, and precious metals.

It's one thing that Mars has over Earth in terms of mineral deposits. While Mars lacks relevant recent fluvial mineral concentration mechanisms, as well as those aided by life, by oxidation, and a number of other processes, it's also struck more often by large asteroids, and thus probably has more common stratified impact deposits.

Re:Is it Iron?

[athmanb]

No, all commercially mined iron ore is from sediments formed in the precambrian when the increasing oxygen supply on Earth converted the iron in solution in the oceans to iron oxides.

Re: Is it Iron?

[penandpaper]

if it wasn't buried beneath ice

We're working on that. And they said nothing good would come from Global warming.

Re: Is it Iron?

[Rei]

I live in Iceland. Apart from the increasing habitability to pests, and the aesthetic loss of our retreating glaciers, it's pretty nice up here. Tack on five degrees and we're Seattle. ;)

Re: Is it Iron?

[Anonymous Coward]

in an area where mining is illegal

It's only illegal to mine there if you're from a country which a) signed a particular Treaty and b) has laws which make violating the Treaty illegal.

Re: Is it Iron?

[lgw]

if it wasn't buried beneath ice

We're working on it.

in an area where mining is illegal

Drill there, drill now!

Re: Is it Iron?

[micahraleigh]

Seems weird. Why would Mars have more asteroid impacts if it is so much smaller? Proximity to the asteroid belt I guess.

Re: Is it Iron?

[Rei]

Correct. In fact, given how frequently it's struck versus Earth, combined with how small impactors don't oxidize away, there are actually some proposals to mine iron on Mars simply by collecting and melting down meteorites. ;) The MERs and Curiosity have found a good number of them just in their slow crawls across the surface.

Honestly, I don't expect anyone would ever approve of such a thing - pristine asteroids are just too valuable.

Erm

[looptron]

The Sun doesn't really do "news" or "facts". Given that they're doing "science" does this mean they've run out of celebs and immigrants to pick on?

Re:Erm

[gtall]

nah, they just added the Ancient Astronauts Believers to their list of easily duped readers. They should have interviewed the Greek guy with the electric hair for the article, he's always good for a stupid quote or two.

Re:Article links only to other Sun articles

[skids]

It does name a scientist (after scrolling underneath the ad).. seems they refer to this. The talk page is also informative as to the academic disposition of the research.. It apparently wasn't quite worth the premature hype it got in 2006, and no justification as to why it merits another news article now is provided by TFA.

Seriously? The Sun?

[Lisandro]

Why don't you post a link to The Mirror as well? At least they don't dance around and call it a lost Nazi UFO base right away.

What the fuck is going on with this site?

Re:Seriously? The Sun?

[murdocj]

no wonder the Nazis lost, they couldn't even keep track of a base that was 150 miles wide.

Linky...

[Svenberg]

And for those that want to see the actual article...

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GC002149/full

Get it right

[AndyKron]

A 151 miles wide by 848 meters deep? Be more consistent with your units please

Re:Get it right

[Archibald Buttle]

For the UK, and this was in a UK paper, that is pretty normal and consistent with most other publications.

Newspapers will measure large distances in miles, as that's what we use for our roads, but short distances in metres, as they're what we are taught in school.

Re: Get it right

[Desler]

How many hogshead of cider would fit in that space?

Re:Get it right

[jbmartin6]

I need to know how many Library of Congresses can fit inside.

Re: Get it right

[The-Ixian]

I am more interested in the number of turkeys it would take to fill that volume.

We need: Turkey Volume Guessing Man

Crow: Well, behold, for that is my power. I can guess the number of turkeys it would take to fill any given space, for I am Turkey Volume Guessing Man!

Tom: And this is useful because...?

Crow: Sadly, it is not useful at all. And so my powers isolate me and I am a puzzle to the ordinary run of man, although women are drawn to me for my powers are fascinating. And yet there is no woman who can hold me, for always am I confronted by spaces of various sizes and I must guess the number of turkeys it would take to fill them, for I am Turkey Volume Guessing Man!

Re: Get it right

[Desler]

That's an area, not a volume.

No it's not.

Re: Get it right

[fbobraga]

why not use the "soccer fields" unit, them?!

Seriously...

[calexontheroad66]

Seriously!?
When do UFO conspiracy groups becomes source material?
I have read all that crap material since the time of the usenet, using TIN to check newsgroups and buying OMNI magazine.
Jeezus!!... The material is repeated ad nauseam, at the time I was a teenager, but once one starts to see the inconsistencies that it is just a form of entertainment.
Much like the fantastic tales of the middle ages and renaissance, there is always market for grown-up faery tales.
If there is a large iron deposit in Antartica, great. But nothing like "Aliens" special.

Re:Nazi UFOs

[meerling]

Um...
The nazis tried to turn an alien asteroid ufo that crashed there eons ago into a base, but it had xenomorphs and they all got ate or turned into baby xeonomorph incubators. At least until some badass non-human combat junkies dreds got bored with buzzing other uncontacted planets and decided to go there and party predator style!

(Did I make enough references in that one? I could probably squeeze in a few more, but it's just about 3am here. Night!)

I know what it is

[skovnymfe]

Obviously, this is the weapons platform the Ancients built. They already made about 10 seasons worth of TV documentary about it.

Re:I know what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed!

Re:I know what it is

[mcswell]

Was that documentary entitled Stargate SG-1? Maybe the Thermians will come looking for Col. O'Neil.

Seriously

[viralnewo]

Seriously? You linked to the fucking Sun newspaper?

Re:Seriously

[Desler]

And not even to the good part of the Sun...

Alien vs Predator

[Tim12s]

Nuke it from orbit...

Come on...

[damacus]

I can't believe you guys posted this crap. This is stale - the news itself about the land crater dates back to 2006. Next, this article is from *The Sun* which is akin to National Enquirer. Nazi UFO base? Give me a break...... The WLC itself is pretty cool and interesting, but there are other articles that would've sucked a lot less. Here's an example: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/heres... CHOOSE A BETTER SOURCE.

Mulder, Skully - Could you come into my office!

[burni2]

The inevitable X-Files reference!

The next reference is "Star Gate - Antarctica"

Re:The Sun

[Falconhell]

Sun readers dont care who runs the country, as long as she has big tits.

What moron posted this....?

[womble91]

I'm aware many slashdotters have slightly less than positive feelings for this poster but why would anyone link to an article in The Sun.... That's nearly as bad as posting something from Fox News or CNN. It's a terrible source of news and they don't deserve any additional revenue from their articles being posted elsewhere. They are the sort of paper who supports xenophobic views of those like Trump and Farage.

Re:What moron posted this....?

[Lumpy]

True. The SUN seems to be more credible than Fox News.

Which one?

[Meneth]

So is this Homeworld, Alien vs Predator, or Stargate SG-1? I'm hoping for the first. "One hundred years ago, a satellite detected an object under the sands of the great desert..."

Re:Which one?

[hyades1]

Please don't degrade this discussion with reference to mere fantasy and non-existent aliens.

If there's going to be an expedition to this site, it's Shoggoths they need to worry about.

Re:Which one?

[sl3xd]

I'm not sure I agree.

During William Dyer's expedition in 1931, the Shoggoths didn't appear to cause any injury to anybody on the expedition -- though in fairness, the survivors high-tailed it away as soon as they started hearing the Shoggoths coming. On the other hand, something even older than the Shoggoths nearly exterminated the entire expedition.

It's also not clear that Shoggoths are of extra-terrestrial origin; they may have originated on Earth.

Re:Which one?

[hyades1]

All excellent points, and we could no doubt discuss how humans would fare in the midst of a Shoggoth feeding event.

Thank you for refusing to join the descent into nonsense we've seen elsewhere on this thread.

Re:Which one?

[sl3xd]

All excellent points, and we could no doubt discuss how humans would fare in the midst of a Shoggoth feeding event.

Who is to say it's a feeding event that humans need to fear? We don't know a lot about Shoggoths; for all we know, they are more interested in vivisection than feeding.

Or, for that matter, they may just want to kill us and move on. We certainly have no issues with killing mice & insects, with no thought to eating them.

I think we can both agree that a human interaction with a Shoggoth will not end well for the human.

The question is: How big will the mess be?

let me guess

[murdocj]

They send a team out to dig it up and right when they unearth the creature a storm blows up and isolates them.

Documentary

[Subm]

There was already a documentary on it, called "The Thing," by John Carpenter.

Very informative and worth watching.

Nope

[jocarren]

The word "UFO" is featured too many times for the article to be credible.

Re:Nope

[Desler]

It's long past the freezing stage. Unidentified Frozen Object!

It's either paywalls or tabloids

[joneil]

Here's the problem. A very quick google search will turn up research papers on on the Wilkes Land Anomaly, but they are mostly behind paywalls or "free registration", etc, etc.

A person can play video games, read tabloids, browse conspiracy websites, watch porn or gamble for "free" online all day long, but the minute you want serious information on any topic nowadays, the serious research is almost always behind "paywalls". For the average person who is not involved in some form of academia, how many east to find alternatives (other than wikipedia) are there out there? More importantly, hwo easy are they to find and access as compared o the others? As long as we as a society continue to operate this way, then society as a whole will continue to "dumb down" in general. "idiocracy" here we come. :(

Re:It's either paywalls or tabloids

[dgatwood]

Agreed. Paywalled, for-profit scientific research journals have done more to contribute to the dumbing down of society than just about anything else in modern history except television (and not just because of the paywalls).

Rather obvious now that it's almost certainly

[sabbede]

a crashed spaceship, with an outside chance of being the lost city of R'lyeh. Either way the course is clear - we have to dig it up and find out for sure. If we unleash a horde of alien conquerors or awaken mighty Cthulhu from his slumber in the process... well, we can figure out how to cross that bridge when we get to it.

Re:The Sun

[LordWabbit2]

Nothing wrong with that, makes the drivel they are told to spew out more interesting to watch.

Borg ...

[perpenso]

So, "Alien" or "The Thing"? What are your bets guys?

Assuming "Alien" is referring to a "xenomorph" we might want to add Borg to the list.

They finally found the Macross

[Thanatiel]

We are only 17 years after what was predicted : that's not so bad.

Sounds familiar

[george929a]

They found Scout Ship 0344 containing the Genesis Chamber. Last I heard Luthor was in NY. Keep them apart or it will be Doomsday....

Easy...

[Lumpy]

very strong gravitational anomaly... Antarctic... This one is easy.

It's a Stargate.

R U Serious?

[hjames]

Absolutely - their PREVIOUS stories on this were "Atlantis under the Ice" - its the very definition of Fake News!!
Their website says, in plain ink - "We pay for your stories!" STORIES, its NOT NEWS!

Re:The Sun

[Desler]

With plenty of massive objects to be seen.

No to the obligatory XKCD

[Provocateur]

This one deserves an obligatory Far Side comic.

No need to space mine

[Bruha]

If that asteroid is as big as that and accessible it may be the most valuable mining site in the world.

Re:No need to space mine

[MFriis]

That certainly depends on what it's made of. Best case is the asteroid is leftovers from a dieing star after undergoing multiple fusions. Gold forexample is rarer than carbon because it requires a lot more nuclear reactions, and not all stars make it that far. It's far more likely to stop at Carbon (which ends up as rocks) or Iron (FE). Simple way (but crude and potentially wrong in some cases) to see how rare something will be is to look at a periodic table. Fusion starts with Hydrogen or Helium and once it's over the nuclear reactions start going through the table until the energy is spent.

Re:Serious info cost money

[guruevi]

Actually, the US taxpayer has paid for a lot of that research, the only reason it sits behind a paywall is because of the big name publishers that want to make money, not from you, the average joe that wants to read an article, they charge hefty fees so peer researchers have to pay in order to continue or verify their work. Some times researchers are even forced to pay for their own work when they move institutions.

I wonder

[p51d007]

How many will get that reference ;)

Re:I wonder

[I'm New Around Here]

I must have slept thru that part of the movie.

Re:I wonder

[DutchUncle]

Only old people like us.

Re:I wonder

[es330td]

Not enough, sadly...

Re:I wonder

[fbobraga]

please explain it to who don't got it (like me)

Re:I wonder

[xeno]

Sigh. I feel old.

Re:I wonder

[dzelenka]

It's from the book "2001, A Space Odyssey". I don't think it was expressed in the movie, so the target audience for the joke is literate old people.

Re:I wonder

[quenda]

It was only 15 years ago.

Re: I wonder

[fbobraga]

Thanks by the answer, but what movies (looking the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... was not helpful to me...)

Re:I wonder

[RuaisLampSilog]

Yeah, I don't recall having the proportions mentions in 2001, I think it is mentioned in 2010, and it is definitely mentions in both books.

Re: I wonder

[pixelpusher220]

Maybe a couple thousand ;)

Re:I wonder

[lgw]

2001. 2010. The movie for 2010 is decent, though I'm, not 100% sure it will explain the reference. The books are good though.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? 2001 wasn't 15 yea... oh! I see what you did there.

Re: I wonder

[LinuxLuver]

I'd say literate people. The book is still well known and available to all ages. ;-) (Whew! Got that covered.)

Re:I wonder

[Hal9000_sn3]

Even though the mission is the most important thing to keep in mind, I do find these other references to be of interest.

Re:I wonder

[Coren22]

As far as I recall, there was a passing reference in the movie to the 1:4:9 ratio.

However, that gravitational anaomaly was in tycho crater on the moon.

The Sun does Science

[Roger W Moore]

Well Slashdot is quoting a science article from the Sun 'newspaper' so I think we are pretty much well beyond the Mountains of Madness now and heading out over the Seas of Stupidity.

Re:The Sun does Science

[nukenerd]

Well Slashdot is quoting a science article from the Sun 'newspaper'

I missed that. Non-UK Slashdotters might not know that The Sun (a Murdock newspaper) is the trashiest daily paper in the UK, even worse than the Mirror. A Sun factoid is that the editorial policy imposes a ~1000 word vocabulary set up in the spell checkers (it may be 2000, variable, but very low anyway), to use a word outside which a writer needs special permission from the editor.

Re:The Sun does Science

[Hognoxious]

Say what you like about The Sun's journalists, but they can all spell Murdoch.

Re:The Sun does Science

[RuaisLampSilog]

Yeah, I was trying to find a better source, but found none.

Re: The Sun does Science

[coteriescavenger]

You blame alternative media for Trump's victory, but you're still so brainwashed by corporate media that you still don't realize he's a boyscout compared to Hillary, and he's really the best we deserve.

The news renaissance already happened when the MSM shut Ron Paul out of the election in 2012. What you're seeing now, and not recognizing, is the MSM clawing for their control back from "fake news" and "Russians" (a.k.a. the unregulated internet). The news renaissance is already happening, and you're still on the wrong side.

Re: The Sun does Science

[Gussington]

You blame alternative media for Trump's victory, but you're still so brainwashed by corporate media that you still don't realize he's a boyscout compared to Hillary, and he's really the best we deserve.

Oh give up with that brainwashed by media routine. Most of the senior Republicans know that a Trump presidency will be a net loss for most Americans. Or do you think they also get their information from CNN?

Re: The Sun does Science

[lucien86]

"You blame alternative media for Trump's victory, but you're still so brainwashed by corporate media that you still don't realize he's a boyscout compared to Hillary, ..."

Soviet propaganda detected. Agent Trumpski has risen and now we will see if he obeys his master or turns on him.... :D

Re: The Sun does Science

[coteriescavenger]

That's what democrats actually believe. "Look it's a conflicting point of view. It's coming from a foreign nation!" All the while, Hillary accepts donations from Qatar, and promises millions of more immigrants will vote in the next election. It's amazing how close she actually came to winning. This is how poisoned our society is. I think we have little chance of recovering, except that now we have the internet and a free market media.

Re: The Sun does Science

[lucien86]

But this is a foreign nation which has blamed America for its woes and has had a grudge against America going back decades. Also this was a direct attack against the US electoral system using highly refined and targeted hacking and propaganda. In times when the US was a much stronger country that would have been seen as an act of war.
I doubt there is actually any direct connection between Trump and Putin, Putin is probably hoping Trump will do as much damage to America, and its democracy and economy as possible. Putin may well have disastrously miscalculated there, either for himself or the world. Lets face it no one really knows what Trump will do. He cant remotely fulfil all the promises he's made through because they flatly contradict each other..

We really do live in interesting times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re: The Sun does Science

[coteriescavenger]

You think the Republican Party knows what's best for America either? Trump disavowed them for a reason. Our whole system is effed up, not just the dems. You think I'm only talking about CNN when I say media? I'm talking about all of corporate media. Not even Fox can be trusted. Legacy media shut Ron Paul out of the 2016 election, but they were unbelievably brazen with their deliberate violation of basic journalistic standards and trust in 2016. They finally lost, though. They're losing control of the message to free internet media. Now they're hypocritically starting a war on "fake news" without missing a beat.

These are facts. They are out in the open for everyone to see who looks. If you heard anything different, it came straight from corporate media and the Democratic Party. Good luck catching up on everything you missed these last few months without a peep from your trusted media sources.

Re: The Sun does Science

[coteriescavenger]

But this is a foreign nation which has blamed America for its woes and has had a grudge against America going back decades. Also this was a direct attack against the US electoral system using highly refined and targeted hacking and propaganda. In times when the US was a much stronger country that would have been seen as an act of war. I doubt there is actually any direct connection between Trump and Putin, Putin is probably hoping Trump will do as much damage to America, and its democracy and economy as possible. Putin may well have disastrously miscalculated there, either for himself or the world. Lets face it no one really knows what Trump will do. He cant remotely fulfil all the promises he's made through because they flatly contradict each other. You see through the boldfaced propanda of Trump being in bed with Russia, but you think there's merit to the story that Russia hacked our election? Did you believe the story that Trump was going to start a war with Russia, that Julian Assange was working with Russia, or that the "fake news" (alternative media) has anything to do with Russian interests? Our propagandists don't even try to hide themselves anymore. They've finally been caught deliberately lying to us left and right, and they expect us to eat this up too. The truth is there is no real evidence of Russia hacking our election. However, we do know that George Soros provided the software for hundreds of electronic voting machines. We know that the DNC was conspiring to commit voter fraud. Heck, Obama publicly advised illegal aliens to vote.

Putin isn't hoping Trump will eff up America (he knows Hillary would do that better). Putin is looking out for Russia's self-interest, and he's scared to death of the impending war. He gave a speech pleading to the American, saying he doesn't know how to get through to us, our media tells us nothing. That never made the media either. Putin just wants the candidate that promised to make a deal with Russia over the one that promised to go to war with them.

I can't tell you everything the MSM has lied about, all I can do is tell you is to find a free speech zone, and start looking for privately owned, noncorporate alternative media outlets. Slashdot doesn't count.

Re: The Sun does Science

[lucien86]

Sorry from outside the US where the media is more honest and less partisan it is 100% clear that Russia did hack and attack the Democratic party side extensively. Also know your facts - the biggest liars of all are Fox. Fox is owned by Murdoch, a global media manipulator and enemy of democracy.

Re: The Sun does Science

[coteriescavenger]

Sorry from outside the US where the media is more honest and less partisan it is 100% clear that Russia did hack and attack the Democratic party side extensively. Also know your facts - the biggest liars of all are Fox. Fox is owned by Murdoch, a global media manipulator and enemy of democracy.

First, your media only knows what our government and media tell them about this issue. Even if they were honest for a change, you can never be 100% sure where a hack came from. Second, whoa, you think your media is honest about issues that affect them? How is brexit? This propaganda about the Russians is going to affect you guys just as much as us if we go to war.

To say Fox is the biggest liar just means you don't know your side lies to you too. All of corporate media is implicated. CNN, ABC and others were caught red handed, but clearly Fox is playing for the same team when it comes to the overlord's interests.

Asteroids unlikely to hit polar regions

[MFriis]

I must admit all my orbital experience comes from reddit and Kerbal Space Program. BUT isn't it highly unlikely that an asteroid would hit a polar region? Rotation of earth, aswell as our trajectory around the sun and our solar systems trajectory around the galaxy all make it much easier for asteroids, especially big ones, to come at earth from the side. The closer to the equator the more likely to hit. Based on all the the observed craters by the lunar and planetary institute (http://www.lpi.usra.edu/science/kring/epo_web/impact_cratering/World_Craters_web/worldcraters_maps.jpg) it looks like the northern hemisphere is even more favoured to be hit. So with the low odds of it being an asteroid, what are they basing their assumption on?

Re:Asteroids unlikely to hit polar regions

[RockDoctor]

Several interesting errors in (or behind) your comment.

I must admit all my orbital experience comes from reddit and Kerbal Space Program.

These are not very good sources.

BUT isn't it highly unlikely that an asteroid would hit a polar region? Rotation of earth, as [ ] well as our trajectory around the sun and our solar systems trajectory around the galaxy all make it much easier for asteroids, especially big ones, to come at earth from the side.

Take a look at the sky one night when you can see and identify the Milky Way. (Or, if you live in a light polluted area, use a planetarium programme with some claim to accuracy. There are hundreds - because the data is free.) Once you can identify the ecliptic (the path of the Sun-Earth mutual orbit projected onto the plane of the sky ; also a +/- 10 degrees approximation to the plane containing most of the non-solar mass in the Solar System) and the centreline of the trace of the disc of the Milky Way, you'll see that they're inclined at about 60 degrees to each other. In the 200 million years (-ish) orbit of the Solar System around the galaxy, this plane will spin around the percieved sky, even after you correct for the daily rotation of the Earth on it's axis. This has happened around 22 times since the Solar System formed. With about a 2 billion year history of impacting on the continents (~120 million years on the oceans) this alone would destroy your perceived correlation.

For a second dent - consider the largest reported impact structure in the Solar System - the Martian North Polar Basin. Some 2000 km across. Centred quite closely on it's pole.

For a third dent, don't forget the 23 degree inclination of the Earth's rotation axis to the pole to the ecliptic - that too is going to smear out your perceived "zone of non-impact" by ... well, 23 degrees of latitude.

Based on all the the observed craters by the lunar and planetary institute (http://www.lpi.usra.edu/science/kring/epo_web/impact_cratering/World_Craters_web/worldcraters_maps.jpg) it looks like the northern hemisphere is even more favoured to be hit.

Most of the land mass of the Earth is in the northern hemisphere. A mere 100 Myr ago, it was close to 50:50 ; 400 Myr ago (about the time of the possible Ordovician spike in impact activity) there was a bias to southern hemisphere continental land masses about as strong as our currnt northern bias. Impact structures can persist on continents for billions of years (Vredefort in .ZA is around 2.1 billion years old, and we don't even know which hemisphere it was in within the uncertainty in it's age ; Sudbury around 1.2 billion ; the putative Stac Fada impactor (where I've personally collected samples and hand-lensed the outcrops) around 1.0 billion) ; impact structures in the ocean basins last around 0.1 billion years before being subducted. You have a deeply biased sample before you consider that the northern land masses have been considerably more closely explored than the southern continents.

Your data isn't wrong, but it is inherently biased. It's like pre-1990 models of planetary systems that discounted the possibility of "hot Jupiter" planets, because we had no idea how (or why) they could form. Our data se then was biased by one odd example ; now it's biased by the ease of detecting "hot Jupiters" ; one day we hope to have a less-biased (n.b., not unbiased) data set. You've got to check for bias in your data sources.

"Mutineers' Moon" reference

[Walking The Walk]

I can't believe I'm the first one to post a reference to Mutineers' Moon. Clearly this is Anu's stronghold, and we need to invade it before he finds a way to take over the ship that replaced our moon.

David Weber for the win!

completely idiotic

[slashmydots]

Their source for the photos is Secure Team. Enough said. He's the biggest joke on Youtube and is a known liar.

Old news?

[Mockylock]

Wasn't this found to be a mascon in 2006? https://www.eurekalert.org/pub...

None of the above

[Black Parrot]

It's merely a mounting socket, with the topmost elephant still in it.

What's worrisome is that they didn't detect the whole stack of elephants going down. I fear the top one has slipped off the stack, leaving our planet's stability to the vagaries of gravity and orbits and stuff.

Crappy Reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

The anomaly was actually discovered in 1959-1960:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antarctic-science/article/the-wilkes-land-anomaly-revisited/44DCA3FC303E6FF82CD3259AD41A2437

by this guy

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/canyoncourier/obituary.aspx?pid=173344814

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkes_Land_crater

The mass concentration (ie. asteroid remnants) was first discussed in 2006.

Unusual that so many hit continents

[Eravnrekaree]

It is pretty surprising that so many of these have hit the continents rather than the ocean basin considering most of the planet is ocean. One hitting the ocean basin would not leave much trace due to plate subduction. However, if a large asteroid hit the deep ocean basin, what would the effect be, would the ocean water perhaps prevent the dust and so on from entering the air, instead you would end up with a tsunami , avoiding the climate change? Or would the force oft he comet be such that the dust would manage to enter the atmosphere anyway?

Re:Unusual that so many hit continents

[RockDoctor]

The transient crater from a multi-km impactor hitting the Earth is tens of km deep. That wouldn't change much regardless of depth of ocean basin that was hit - which average around 4-5 km deep. The really deep toughs of the oceans are no more common than the really high areas of the mountains - very unlikely to be hit. They're also not very wide, so a 10km deep by 100km wide transient crater would extend beyond the sides of the deep ocean trench.

Big impacts don't matter if they're on the continents or on the oceans. They're really good events to watch from a different planet.

Re:The Sun

[Gorobei]

Funny. Your politico-geek papers are in good standing.

Impact craters are boring, punch it up a bit

[istartedi]

Nazis and aliens, at your service!

Time for some Bal-Sagoth!

[maharvey]

First thing I thought of, of course. Bal-Sagoth - In Search of the Lost Cities of Antarctica

What?...they just found it?

[abmw]

I have, in all candor, known about this for years. Really. I just knew there was something down there.

Watchmen

[illtud]

Phew. Elon Musk has taken my suggestion and is playing out Watchmen to avert the Trumpocalypse.

And yet

[WindBourne]

The far right speaks against NASA doing work with moving asteroids , or creating another Earth 2 on Mars.

Ta full quote.

[Falconhell]

Sir Humphrey: The only way to understand the Press is to remember that they pander to their readers' prejudices.
Jim Hacker: Don't tell me about the Press. I know *exactly* who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by the people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they *ought* to run the country. The Times is read by the people who actually *do* run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who *own* the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by *another* country. The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard Woolley: Sun readers don't care *who* runs the country - as long as she's got big tits.

Magnetism not gravity.

[MarkSlater4278]

it's due to the magnetic north and south centripetal vortex pulling atoms together into their tightest formation. the circular shape is actually hexagonal. check out electric field lines on facebook to get more info. it's the nature of magnetism. not gravity.