Murder Hornets, Martian Crops, Sex Robots and More Mysterious News Briefly — August 16, 2021

Mysterious News Briefly — August 16, 2021

The 73-mile-long Hadrian’s Wall has survived 1,900 years both above ground and below –a previously undiscovered early section was found recently during work on a water main in the city of Newcastle in northeastern England, and the water company promised to route the pipe around the wall. If only water companies to build pipes to last as long as Hadrian’s Wall.

Sorry, Matt Damon – new tests show that greenhouses won’t work on Mars because the sunlight contains too much cosmic radiation for plant growth, so they may have to be grown in underground bunkers with artificial lighting. Watch for NASA and SpaceX to start competing to recruit marijuana growers.

A study by University of Ottawa and University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers found that a male woolly mammoth whose remains were found near Alaska’s Kikiakrorak River actually traveled 43,500 miles (70,000 km) during his 28-year lifetime – walking a distance of twice the circumference of the Earth. Now do you feel guilty about getting dropped off at the door instead walking across the parking lot?

Pediatricians in the U.S. are finding that children born during the coronavirus pandemic have significantly reduced verbal, motor and overall cognitive performance compared with children born before it – with the biggest reason being the lack of stimulation and interaction at home. Don’t wait for an app for this – that’s the problem.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports July 2021 was the hottest month ever recorded, with the combined land- and ocean-surface temperature around the world reaching 1.67 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average of 60.4 degrees. One might say this is putting the ‘climb’ in climate change.

New research by behavioral ecologists found that a fear of predators can have long-lasting effects on many wild animals similar to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), causing flashbacks, hypervigilance and anxiety. This won’t become a real issue until it starts affecting the taste of venison.

The first live Asian giant “murder hornet“( Vespa mandarinia) of 2021 was spotted in far northern Washington state in the act of attacking a paper wasp nest in near the town of Blaine. People and entomologists are concerned while paper wasps want to know if there’s anything in the infrastructure bill to prevent this from happening in the future.

In a tweet about the SpaceX Starship, Elon Musk bragged it will be “crushingly cost-effective” as each ship will be able to make a dozen trips to Mars over its 30-year lifespan. The next generation of David Bowies and Elton Johns need to start working on songs about how boring space travel will be.

Those hyper–realistic, programmable sex robots are becoming so lifelike that they may have to appear as witnesses in court, as Australian lawmakers prepare to debate their benefits versus claims they objectify the opposite sex and promote sexual violence. Do they swear to tell the truth with their robotic hand on the Bible or Isaac Asimov’s ‘I, Robot’?

Mount Etna in Catania, Sicily, has been erupting so much in the past six months, it added 100 feet (30 meters) in height to 11,013 feet (3,357 m) above sea level, the tallest the volcano has been in recorded history. Should Sicilians start practicing their “escape from Pompeii” poses?

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