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| Credit: fir0002 |
In 2300, an area the size of Pennsylvania in Antarctica will be ice free, prompting geopolitical conflicts over its resources. Think gold, silver, that kind of stuff.
But wait just a minute...
Did you say *2300*? Ahem, that´s in 200 years. Why was this even published?
Antarctica hides huge cashes of gold, silver, copper and iron
This could be click bait or trolling, but this content-creator at least seemingly claims that Elon Musk´s Starlink has discovered the infamous "Ice Wall" in the Antarctica. That is, Elon confirmed that the Earth is flat?!
Yeaaah...
Det norska stortinget röstade just för att behålla monarkin. HA HA HA. Utvisa hela stortinget till Bouvetöya!
Trump and some branch of his admin recently posted a very strange meme. It shows Trump together with a penguin holding an American flag. They are seen walking towards a mountain range at which the Greenland flag has been hoisted. Most people who seen the meme react at that particular detail. After all, penguins live in Antarctica. Greenland is in the Arctic.
But...
The more I think about the meme, the more I´m convinced that this is a hex. A self-hex, to be precise. Trump is essentially cursing himself?! The picture of the penguin originally comes from a strange docu by Werner Herzog. Yes, *that* Werner Herzog. The guy with all the pessimistic and apocalyptic films and documentaries. Often with a certain Klaus Kinski as lead actor. The penguin is implied to be nihilistic or insane. Rather than heading for the sea together with his flock, he walks towards the mountains...and a certain death. On the Mountains of Madness?
So the meme could be (subconsciously) read in the following manner: Trump is acting like the crazy penguin (or like Kinski?), leading all of America to its doom, chasing the mirage of a Greenland military conquest.
It´s actually quite eerie. And no, I don´t really believe in magick. Which makes it eerier still.
Look, I solved the mystery for you with the help of ChatGPT (which must be evil or something).
Great question! Reports of radio pulses detected under Antarctic ice can sound mysterious, but there are several well-understood natural explanations for such signals. Let’s break down what might be going on:
Antarctica is a prime site for detecting cosmic rays — extremely high-energy particles from outer space.
When cosmic rays strike the atmosphere or ice, they create particle showers that emit brief bursts of radio-frequency signals.
Experiments like ANITA (Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna) detect these natural radio pulses reflecting off or passing through the ice.
Ice sheets experience stress and cracking due to temperature fluctuations, glacial movement, or seismic activity.
Cracking ice can generate electrical discharges or electromagnetic pulses detectable as radio signals.
This phenomenon is similar to the piezoelectric effect, where mechanical stress produces electrical signals in certain crystals (ice can behave somewhat this way under pressure).
Natural radio signals called sferics (short for “atmospheric radio pulses”) occur when lightning produces electromagnetic pulses.
Though lightning is rare over Antarctica, distant storms can send radio waves that propagate through the atmosphere and reflect from the ice.
Earth’s natural magnetosphere and ionosphere also generate radio noise.
Solar flares and geomagnetic storms send bursts of charged particles interacting with Earth’s magnetic field.
These interactions can create radio pulses detected on the ground, including polar regions.
Sometimes signals come from natural thermal emissions or noise in the detection instruments themselves.
Antarctic radio experiments carefully calibrate to rule out these false positives.
Many scientific instruments in Antarctica detect brief radio pulses daily, mostly caused by cosmic rays, ice dynamics, and atmospheric phenomena.
None of these require exotic explanations like alien signals or secret bases.
Researchers use these natural radio pulses to study:
Cosmic ray physics,
Ice sheet properties,
Climate and geophysical processes.
If you want, I can tell you more about specific Antarctic experiments like ANITA or how scientists use radio waves to map ice!
Note that Styx (the guy in the pirate hat above) explicitly says that the chase is better than the catch when it comes to mysteries. An attitude I long suspected that many Schwärmers have. Their mystery-mongering is deliberate.
This week´s mystery are some kind of radio pulses seemingly coming from under the ice in Antarctica. Yepp, an excellent tie-in for lost Nazi expeditions, alien underground bases, the Lost Civilization or what have you!
When will this end, I wonder?
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| Credit: White House |
Donald Trump has imposed tariffs on Heard Island and McDonald Islands in the Antarctic, home only to penguins. "Which nobody have heard about". Apparently, the tariff is 10%.
So in the unlikely case the Australian wildlife service decides to turn the local semi-pelagic avifauna into bush meat (to compete with true Amerikan raccoon and possum steak), YOU HAVE BEEN DULY WARNED.
This is Liberation Day.
No evidence...yet. Or ever? Maybe in 14 million years? It seems Earth passed through some kind of "galactic structure" 14 million years ago which strangely enough correlated with a sharp decrease in temperature (think Antarctic ice sheets) and an extinction event. Strangely since no known connection seems to exist between our galactic sojourn and the contretemps down below...
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| Not exactly Vegavis, but close enough to make the point |
Did so-called modern birds evolve already before the great extinction event 66 million years ago? Specifically "Vegavis iaai", a bird classified as an anseriform (think ducks, geese and so on).
According to the article linked below, anseriforms and galliforms are the two oldest groups among modern birds. If it quacks like a crown bird...
I admit I had no idea, I mean, shouldn´t it be ratites or something?!
Fossil of ancient duck-like creature discovered in Antarctica
So it actually happened. A mad scientist (?) recently proposed to detonate a nuclear bomb to save the world from global warming. Yes, really.
At least he didn´t propose an actual nuclear war. Instead, the idea seems to be to detonate the mother of all A-bombs on the sea floor off the sinisterly named Desolation Island (a.k.a. Kerguelen) and then just await the results with folded arms. Pun almost intended!
The results, if I understand Sabine´s video above, is that the explosion will free enormous amounts of basalt into the sea water. The basalt will somehow bind carbon dioxide and hence save the day. Interestingly, Hossenfelder doesn´t say that its technically impossible to actually do this...it justs costs a lot of money! And may have, ahem, unintended consequences...
Peak 2025 has arrived. Already.
Here we go again. "Professor Dave Explains" have the latest updates on the so-called Final Experiment and its aftermath.
As many people probably know by now, American Christian pastor Will Duffy took several flat earthers with him on an expedition to Antarctica. The purpose: to prove once and for all that the Earth is a globe. On the most popular flat earth "model", there can´t be a 24-hour sun ("midnight sun") in Antarctica. Indeed, Antarctica doesn´t even exist but is a mysterious ice wall guarded by heavily armed troops c/o NASA or some such agency?! Lo and behold, the flat earthers did see the sun at midnight. As far as I understand, there were three flat earthers present, but only one changed his mind and rejoined the rest of the humanity. Note that the entire 24-hour day with sunlight was livestreamed on YouTube, that compasses and GPS were used to prove that the team actually was in Antarctica (and not in the Arctic) and that drones were flown over the area to prove that they weren´t in a studio.
Meanwhile at home (and on the web), the fallout has been *epic*, with most flat earthers experiencing cognitive dissonance and coming up with various ad hoc explanations as to what actually happened in Antarctica. This wasn´t unexpected, but "Professor Dave" hopes that the flat earth community is about to split apart, since every "flerfer" seems to have his own pet theory about The Final Experiment. Some even debunk the worst conspiracy claims of the others! Were they filming inside the Vegas Sphere? Did they build a similar building in Antarctica? Or is a 24-hour sun in Antarctica compatible with a flat earth model, after all? The flat earthers who accompanied Will Duffy are accused of being "shills" or "double agents".
Most original - surprise - is Dean Odle, the Christian fundamentalist preacher who was too crazy even for Greg Locke (another fringey preacher). Odle claims that Will Duffy is a "fake pastor", that many of the participants in the expedition were Satanists, and that Satan himself tricked everyone with a fake 24-hour sun?! Not sure what this even means. Was the "sun" actually a UFO, a mirage, or Screwtape having a break? Odle also believe that the US government can change the weather (let me guess: HAARP?), so I suppose the Devil has many friends in high places...
I think it´s still too early to tell whether this is the final countdown, or whether the flat earthers will eventually unite around a common explanation and simply continue to proselytize á la Marian Keech in "When Prophecy Fails". Odle will certainly do so. But yeah, the whole flat earth thing does feel "so 2015". Maybe it really is time to move on.
Hollow Earth next?
Could become a classic. Globe earther calls flat earther from Antarctica, while taping the whole thing. From "The Final Experiment" (TFE), I assume.
There is a lot of videos like this on YouTube just now, documenting the ongoing contretemps of the flat earthers who took a trip to Antarctica only to discover that...ooops...the Earth isn´t flat, after all. Or rather: the "predictions" (such as they are) of the flat earth "model" (such as it is) were proven wrong. In the most common flat earth model, the sun is very small and moves above the earth disk in such a way that a 24-hour sun would be impossible in Antarctica. Indeed, the Antarctic landmass itself doesn´t exist, being an ice wall all around the disk.
But the flat earthers who bravely went to the Seventh Continent eventually realized that the "midnight sun" is real, that Antarctica is there, and that even conspiracy theorists can visit it without being zapped by NASA´s clone warriors (or whoever they think is guarding the Ice Wall). GPS tracking in real time proves they are there, not at some staged location closer to Hollywood.
Of course, the flat earth non-society will come up with all kinds of excuses for the failure of their predictions. Indeed, they already have, some prominents in this milieu declaring before the expedition even launched that there is no flat earth model to begin with (!) and hence no predictions to disprove...
Besides, we all know that flat earth itself is a conspiracy to distract attention from *hollow* earth. There!
In a previous blog post, I mentioned that one Will Duffy, a Christian minister in California, was going to organize "the final experiment" to prove that the Earth is (surprise!) a globe. The flat earthers themselves say that if their model is correct, there can´t be a 24-hour sun in Antarctica. So Duffy offered to take the most vociferous flat earthers on an expedition to Antarctica (all expenses paid) so show them the midnight sun. Only a handful took him up on the offer, and it seems they are down there as we speak.
One of the flat earthers even admitted a few days ago that, well, there actually is a 24-hour day close to the South Pole. The expedition also disproves at least two other conspiracy theories: that nobody is allowed to ever visit Antarctica, and that the continent is really an "Ice Wall". GPS tracking clearly shows that the expedition (including the participating flat earthers) *did* go to the icy landmass from Chile. Also, the whole thing was apparently shown live on YouTube.
So will the flat earth community change their minds? LOL. Of course they won´t. They have already accused the flat earthers who signed on of being "shills" and are coming up with various coping mechanisms in real time. For instance, that the "sun" is a hoax. Or that their model doesn´t really imply the impossibility of a 24-hour sunny day in the Antarctica. Or that it´s not important. Or whatever whenever whithersoever.
So don´t worry, the deboonking industry will stay in bizniz even after "the final experiment"...
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| More like summer! |
"A Year on Planet Earth" is a four-part nature documentary released in 2022. I just watched the fall or autumn episode. It´s pretty eclectic and follow very different animals all over the world. It´s not even clear whether it´s always "fall" in the various locations.
Elephants in Africa, grizzlies in the Yukon, chipmunks in Quebec, muskoxen in Norway, Amur falcons chasing swarming termites in Nagaland, and monarch butterflies in both Maine and Mexico...you get the picture. Add zillions of crabs on Christmas Island and you´re done!
I think we´ve seen most of this before, tbh, but it was a nice diversion from the election drama in a certain North American nation...
