Virus-Eating Organisms, Diving Monkeys, Halloween Blue Moon and More Mysterious News Briefly — September 30, 2020

Mysterious News Briefly — September 30, 2020

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) revealed plans to extract hydrogen from the Moon’s ice deposits to use as a fuel source for lunar vehicles rather than carrying it from Earth. To be on the safe side, they should bring along an empty five-gallon can and both Chinese and American money.

MIT researchers now say they’re confident that their “SPARC” compact fusion reactor – which will burn plasma to fuse hydrogen isotopes to form helium with no other input of energy — is “very likely to work.” The best sign it’s also safe would be when the researchers live next door to it.

NASA now says the pesky, difficult-to-locate leak on the International Space Station has grown in size and is leaking oxygen faster than ever. Have they considered a spacewalk to wipe down the outside with soapy water?

Scientists announced the discovery of two single-cell organisms in waters off the coast of Maine that eat viruses as part of their daily diet. Good luck selling the public on THAT injection.

A family kayaking in Ocala, Florida, was forced to change course after dozens of marauding, disease-carrying rhesus monkeys dive-bombed into the river in front of them.  You’ve got to hand it to 2020 – no one had this on their “what could possibly happen this year” bingo card.

University of Portsmouth biologists have engineered a “super enzyme” capable of breaking down plastics faster than other in existence. Be wary if someone tries to sell you a cheap, black market supply of them in a plastic bottle.

Halloween 2020 will have a rare blue moon — the first Halloween full moon visible around the world since 1944. The #1 song on that day was by Stan Kenton & His Orchestra – “How Many Hearts Have You Broken?”. Could they have been playing it with 2020 in mind as well?

The Great North Air Ambulance Service in the UK is testing jetpacks that will allow paramedics to fly up a mountain in seconds to provide first aid. Keep in mind that they don’t consider the roof you’re stuck on because your ladder fell to be a mountain.

Some long-period comets and the Oort cloud seem to travel outside of the standard ecliptic plane all other solar system bodies reside in, and researchers now suggest a galactic tide an ‘empty ecliptic’ oriented 60 degrees to the galactic plane that pulled them in over billions of years. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear we can jump into it and escape 2020.

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