The Weird Science Drop #13 🚀 Sex magic and rockets just don't mix
Humans are making a racket - but who is listening? Also, an extinct big bird is coming back, and what happens when you drop a dead cow into the ocean.
Maong ya agew!* Welcome to the latest TWSD. Look up and what do you see? Lots and lots of stars, which we now know have lots and lots of planets orbiting around them. So aliens are out there, right? Maybe. But let’s say they are. Should we be trying to contact them? Or should we be more worried that we’re being very noisy without even knowing it right now? All this and naked scientists trying to contact the Antichrist’s mum in this week’s edition. So hit that subscribe button!
*Good day in Pangasinan, a language spoken primarily in the province of Pangasinan in the Philippines
Q: What does a subatomic duck say? (answer at the bottom of the email)
Weird Science News
📻 Earth is unintentionally waving its big hand and shouting ‘hello, I’m over here’ to any nearby extraterrestrial civilisation all the time, says a new study. It turns out radar systems used in airports and military installations have been pumping out a constant stream of information for years.
Combined, all this noise is so strong it could easily be detected by our closest neighbours, such as anyone holidaying around Barnard’s Star or AU Microscopii, without too much trouble. Prof Michael Garrett, a co-author of the study, said:
“Our radar technology is effectively announcing our existence to the cosmos.”
He went on to say that aliens, be they ET or the Predator, would also be able to use the signals to assess our level of technological advancement. Read more on News 18
👾 One group who aren’t shy of reaching out over the stars are those fans of Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind. Made popular by American ufologist Steven Greer, this refers to human-initiated contact with extraterrestrials through… meditation. No rocket required.
The ‘theory’ says advanced aliens can be contacted through focused human consciousness, with people using meditation and collective intention to initiate telepathic communication.
A group of enthusiasts got together in Malta to think really hard and see if anyone turned up. No-one did. But it’s interesting to note the group were made up of sceptics, astrophotographers and some who think ‘we are prisoners of a galactic war’. Read more on Times of Malta
🐟 Tuna are pretty harmless unless you’re a smaller fish, right? Wrong. Just ask a seabird. It appears Atlantic Bluefin Tuna have been preying on puffins, after the remains of one were found in the stomach of a fish caught off the coast of Canada.
Puffins are usually the hunters in this situation, but it looks like this particular fish managed to turn the tables. To be fair, a fully grown tuna is a creature you wouldn’t go out of your way to mess with. They’re big and powerful, capable of swimming at a speed of up to 70kph.
It’s not the first time fish have bitten back. Largemouth Bass have been captured grabbing birds perched just above the water, while African Tigerfish have been seen actually leaping from the water to catch Swallows in flight. Read more on Bird Guides
🐣 The company behind the ‘de-extinction’ of the dire wolf is back at it and has another long-gone species in its sights. Colossal Biosciences now wants to bring back a giant 12-foot-tall flightless bird from the dead.
The moa once ran free in New Zealand but unfortunately it was very tasty and easy to catch, so was hunted to oblivion by the locals around 600 years ago. Even though it weighed 230kg, the animal was no threat to humans as it was a herbivore and mostly chomped on leaves, fruits, and shrubs.
It is claimed if the moa were to return to the land of The Lord of the Rings, it could help restore primal New Zealand’s woodlands. After the moa, Colossal also wants to bring back species like the Tasmanian tiger, the dodo and the woolly mammoth. And then it’ll be velociraptors, mark my words. Read more on Wion
🐄 In the name of science, almost anything goes. And that included dropping a cow carcass into the ocean. The scientists were investigating what happens when a dead whale falls to the sea floor. As they didn’t have a whale to hand, a cow seemed the perfect substitute.
What they didn’t bargain for, however, was that eight otherwise elusive sleeper sharks would turn up to have a look at the experiment in the South China Sea.
The sharks, it turns out, were rather polite. And seemed to be queuing up to grab a little light lunch. Read more on IFL Science
Weird Scientist: Jack Parsons
You’d think there was a wide gap between rocket science and sex magic. But in the case of Jack Parsons, you’d be wrong.
Parsons was an engineer at the California Institute of Technology and one of the founders of the famous Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the 1930s. He invented lots of cool stuff, pioneering advances in both liquid-fuel and solid-fuel rockets.
So far, so good. Sure, he had socialist tendencies and was working on a science fiction screenplay with strong anti-capitalist themes to pitch to Hollywood, but everyone needs a hobby.
But then in 1939 he converted to Thelema, a religious movement founded by notorious English occultist Aleister Crowley. This is not the guy you take home to meet your mother. If you want to get an idea of just how scary Crowley was, just gaze at the picture below (but don’t look into his eyes too long):
After that, Parsons was often spotted dancing practically nude around a fire in his garden with housemates as part of pagan rituals. Not weird enough for you? Try this on for size: he joined with Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard to try to raise the mother of the Antichrist, the Whore of Babylon herself; to do this, Parsons masturbated on ‘magical’ tablets while Hubbard took notes.
Unsurprisingly, this got out of control after the pair believed that they could summon spirits by a mix of Hubbard’s chanting while Parsons and his mistress had sex. Hubbard ended up running off with Parsons’ girlfriend (turns out L Ron was not to be trusted), and the scientist spent most of his spare time from then on focused on trying to hex his foe.
He had little success with his astral revenge plan and ended up being killed in an explosion when he dropped a coffee can full of chemicals while preparing a rushed order of some explosives for a film set. Some have suggested it was down to a magical experiment that went awry, while another theory is that he was assassinated by another troubled aerospace engineer, Howard Hughes. Parsons’ wife scattered his ashes in the Mojave Desert, before burning most of his possessions and then performing astral projection to commune with him. I can’t confirm if he said anything.
We’re All Doomed Update
Something worrying is happening in the Antarctic. So worrying that one leading scientist admits she can barely comprehend what is going to happen to the planet - and us.
Louise Sime, from the British Antarctic Survey, says we could have crossed a climate tipping point in West Antarctica - and that the rate of melting ice due to global warming is just going to go faster and faster. She told the Guardian:
"As a human being, I have so much trouble trying to think about the magnitude of the sea-level rise that I'm not sure I have the capacity to really think it through."
The West Antarctica region holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by several feet, and new data shows it could be melting far faster than expected.
According to recent models, continued global warming could push melt rates into runaway territory within decades, though there is some uncertainty around that.
Rising sea levels won’t just mean the displacement of billions of people, but also more extreme droughts, heavier rains, and shifting agriculture zones, impacting everything from grocery prices to global health.
Photo Of The Week 📷
A glowing quoll in the Tasmanian wilderness, the first documentation of its kind, leads a striking line-up of finalists for the 2025 Beaker Street Science Photography Prize. Captured by photographer Ben Alldridge using specialised UV-sensitive techniques, the image reveals the Eastern Quoll biofluorescing in its natural habitat.
Blast From The Past
NASA's Mariner 2 was humanity's first successful planetary science mission - zipping past our near neighbour in 1962. The first close-up look at another planet was not what was expected: Mariner 2 found Venus to be inhospitable (really, really inhospitable), and far hotter than expected. The space probe had no camera, instead beaming back reams and reams of data for ground control to decipher.
Cool Quote
“Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Wernher von Braun
Weird Science Factoid
Bananas are radioactive because they contain potassium. Don’t worry, you’d have to eat a cargo ship’s worth to be in any danger. Although maybe this would turn you into Bananaman?
Fries On The Side (aka the best of the rest)
🌌 The Earth, as well as the entire Milky Way galaxy, could be sitting in a huge cosmic void. The theory is a potential solution to why everything appears to be racing away from us faster than it should, and confirm the true age of our universe.
🔋 Australian researchers have built and tested a quantum battery that can charge instantaneously and store 1,000 times more energy than a previous version. A practical quantum battery could revolutionise energy storage and find a place in the car of tomorrow if the technical challenges are overcome.
⭐ In just a few years we’ll be able to look up and see one of the rarest space events ever. By the end of the decade, we’ll be visited by asteroid 99942 Apophis and it’ll get so close, we’ll be able to see it with the naked eye.
🐶 Scientists have discovered the oldest known domesticated dog breed - and it’s the Qimmit sledge dog from Greenland. The latest findings could provide a key guide for preserving this ancient breed amid threats posed by rapid cultural and climate change.
🧫 The genome of the 1918 Spanish flu virus that killed 100 million people has been sequenced by European researchers - and now we know what made it so deadly and contagious. The genome was found in a sample taken from an 18-year-old Swiss boy who died in Zurich more than a century ago.
🌊 Archaeologists have found evidence ancient Egyptians were using an advanced water-based technology to construct the pyramids. In a sophisticated level of engineering not thought to be possible back then, it is now thought that massive stone bricks were moved by a hydraulic lift system.
More from TWSD
Who wants to live forever?
A wonder from the deep
Bad dreams can kill
Most-visited links from last week’s TWSD
A continent is splitting in two, the rift is already visible, and a new ocean is set to form
Scientists rethink animal consciousness: Reptiles, fish, and insects may be sentient
A Scientist Says Humans Will Reach the Singularity Within 20 Years
About TWSD
Science is weird, and here’s the proof. The Weird Science Drop goes where other, more-sensible newsletters fear to tread. Every week, we grab our trusty white lab coat, a bunch of bubbling test tubes and world-ending robot prototype to go in search for the overlooked, under-the-radar and, above all else, most madcap science news, views and research.
About Me
Daniel Smith is an ancient experienced journalist who has worked for a host of news publishers on both sides of the Atlantic. A long, long time ago, he fancied himself as an astrophysicist but instead turned out to be the worst scientist since the man who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world by pressing the big red button but is safely behind a desk writing this newsletter, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... The Weird Science Drop.
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