The Deep End of the Indian Ocean

"Illustration from the original 1870 edition of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by author Jules Verne" [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsAn Australian ship my have detected pings consistent with a black box, and now a search plane has also detected a signal. The signal could be from the still-missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, but no one can say for certain. The main problem, of course, is that even if the signal is coming from the black box, the black box is somewhere on the bottom of the Indian Ocean.

The Washington Post has a graphic illustrating just how freaking deep that part of the ocean is (h/t Georgette). The signal was detected at a depth of around 15,000 feet, which is also the deepest known part of that area. It’s also almost 500 feet deeper than Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the contiguous U.S., is tall. The pressure there is 6,680 psi, or more than 454 times the air pressure at the earth’s surface (measured as 1 atmosphere). That amount of pressure is unhealthy for humans.

Despite all that, it’s less than half the depth of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific, which at around 36,000 feet (about as deep as cruising altitude is high) is the deepest point on the earth. Only three people have ever been to the bottom, and one of them is filmmaker James Cameron. We should just put him in charge of the search. Continue reading

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Presenting Rule 01 (for Redneck Accessories)

You may have heard of Rule 34, as defined in xkcd: if you can think of it, there’s probably already porn of it on the internet somewhere.

I saw this on Facebook today, posted by Thomas:

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Yes, those are Gun-Nutz, the not-remotely-logical evolution of truck nuts, and they made me realize that we need another rule.

I am therefore proposing Rule 01: if you can think of something tacky, it is probably already available for sale online as a redneck accessory. Continue reading

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Texas is represented by a dog sitting in a bowl

XKCD has always been endearingly weird, but this is quite a head-scratcher:

united_shapes

Image credit: ‘United Shapes’ [CC BY-NC 2.5], via xkcd.

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The Cosmos is full beyond measure

How lucky we are to live in this time

The first moment in human history

When we are in fact visiting other worlds


Via xkcd.

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