In addition to its official insignia, during B-2 stealth bomber test flights, some members of the 509th Bomb Wing procured an unofficial insignia involving an alien, the legend To Serve Man (referring to a famous Twilight Zone episode), and the inscription Gustatus Similis Pullus (Dog Latin for "Tastes like chicken").
"Abduction is a unisex eau de parfum inspired by scents described by close encounter experiencers – the product of a collaboration between Joe Merrell and perfumer Christopher Gordon."
On first blast, there is some sweet spice that could be cinnamon or clove, and then the main body of the fragrance enters, which is a very well done "damp" accord that smells like wet concrete or cardboard. It's a scent that you swear you've smelled somewhere before but can't quite place it. It's not quite a pleasant smell, which is what makes the fragrance a little eerie and disquieting. There is a bit of sour metals mixed in, which we can take to be the smell of the interior of the alien ship, and the ozonic notes make the scent light and transparent.
On August 21–23, 1924, Mars entered an opposition closer to Earth than at any time in the century before or the next 80 years. In the United States, a "National Radio Silence Day" was promoted during a 36-hour period from August 21–23, with all radios quiet for five minutes on the hour, every hour. At the United States Naval Observatory, a radio receiver was lifted 3 kilometres (1.9 miles) above the ground in a dirigible tuned to a wavelength between 8 and 9 km, using a "radio-camera" developed by Amherst College and Charles Francis Jenkins. The program was led by David Peck Todd with the military assistance of Admiral Edward W. Eberle (Chief of Naval Operations), with William F. Friedman (chief cryptographer of the United States Army), assigned to translate any potential Martian messages.
The conventional wisdom is that if sentient life exists elsewhere in the universe, it probably lives on another planet. But in 2020, the physicists Luis Anchordoqui and Eugene Chudnovsky argued that we should consider the possibility that life (including technologically advanced civilizations) might exist inside stars.
Their argument relies upon a very expansive view of the definition of life. They admit that biological life couldn't exist inside a star, but they argue that high-energy physics supplies various "nuclear objects" such as "strings, monopoles, and semipoles" that might be able to encode information and form a self-replicating system (i.e. life).
Their hypothesis is, of course, highly speculative, but they suggest it might provide an explanation for a previously unexplained phenomenon observed in some stars:
Cosmologists have observed stars at all stages of development and decline and can calculate a star’s life cycle based on features like size, heat, and light. As stars age, for instance, they begin to cool and radiate less light. Occasionally, however, a younger star is observed to dim for unknown reasons, as if it is cooling more rapidly than expected.
“There are no theories that explain it,” Chudnovsky said. “So maybe it’s a very complicated process related to the function of a civilization inside the star.”
If a star harbored a nuclear civilization within it, he explained, the energy used to sustain that civilization would cause the star to cool and dim faster—in effect speeding up the aging process. And, at some point, the star would no longer produce enough energy to sustain this form of life.
You play the notes on the guitar and it goes through the amplifier. I have a driver system so that you disconnect the speakers and the sound goes through the driver into a plastic tube. You put the tube in the side of your mouth then form the words with your mouth as you play them. You don't actually say a word: The guitar is your vocal cords, and your mouth is the amplifier. It's amplified by a microphone.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.