Man from Saturn, Balloon Boy, Crayfish Batteries and More Mysterious News Briefly — December 24, 2020

Mysterious News Briefly — December 24, 2020

Colorado Governor Jared Polis pardoned the parents behind the 2009 “Balloon Boy” hoax, when they garnered worldwide attention by claiming their 6-year-old son was trapped inside a silver saucer-shaped helium balloon that had flown away from their Fort Collins home, only to later reveal they had hidden him in the attic the whole time. Even extraterrestrials were mad at them.

Rickia Collings filed a lawsuit at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas claiming that he is from the planet Saturn, is being held against his will on Earth by the United States government, is the victim of an employment discrimination violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and that the federal government has prevented him from earning gainful employment from July 4, 1776. He probably still wants a pandemic relief check.

Scientists analyzing underwater recordings from the Arabian Sea heard an unfamiliar and undocumented kind of whale song in 2017, learned a year later that other researchers heard the same strange song in the Indian Ocean, and finally this year identified it as a previously undiscovered population of blue whales that spends most of its time in the northwestern Indian Ocean. Google ‘hum to search’ came out too late to help them.

UC Riverside scientists are breeding new hybrid citrus fruits that taste good while being resistant to Huanglongbing (HLB), an untreatable citrus greening disease which has destroyed orchards worldwide. Tequila shot drinkers are ready if they need testers.

University of Science and Technology of China researchers have developed a technique using ground crayfish shells to manufacture hierarchical porous carbons, a kind of high-performance supercapacitor material that can be used to store power for wearable displays, electric vehicles and smartphones. Get ready for combination Cajun restaurant-Tesla refueling stations.

According to a blog post for the International Monetary Fund, Big Brother will soon be watching your search history to determine your credit score, with points being deducted for visits to sites they don’t like. All those years of hiding your Internet activity from your parents may finally come in handy.

Dmitry Rogozin, the leader of Russia’s space corporation, Roscosmos, say in a statement that new U.S. commerce restrictions on the Progress Rocket Space Center and other Russian space companies are “illegal” and “stupid.” You know Rogozin is mad when he starts using Russian words that Google translate has no difficulty with.

Despite falling over in storage, SpaceX’s new Starship SN9 has been rolled out onto the launchpad in South Texas and could launch before the end of the year. If Elon Musk can defy the curse of 2020, is it time to start believing he really will make it to Mars?

A new DNA study of ancient skeletons refutes the accepted history of the Caribbean islands by finding that many people living there today descended from mainlanders who arrived on the islands long before the Europeans and were not wiped out by violence, disease and forced labor. How long before studying DNA analysis in college is considered a major in history?

The 13.4 billion years old galaxy GN-z11 has been determined to be farthest detectable galaxy from Earth, at 13.4 billion light-years (134 nonillion km) away. If there’s life in the galaxy, the males undoubtedly think they know a shortcut to Earth.

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