Shapeshifting Cobra, Martian Leg, Haunted Lighthouse and More Mysterious News Briefly — March 14, 2022

Mysterious News Briefly — March 14, 2022

A guy who spends a lot of time looking at NASA’s Mars photos for anomalies thinks this one taken by the Curiosity rover shows a human (or alien) leg sticking out of the Martian ground. Is it a rock or a Rockport mannequin?

A new study on anesthesia found that a brain that was anesthetized or in a coma or in a deep sleep switches back on one section at a time rather than all at once, and the abstract problem-solving capabilities of the prefrontal cortex are the functions that come back online the quickest. Is its first thought “WTF?”?

New research shows that climate change will cause so much heat stress on cattle that it could cost farmers between $15 and $40 billion annually by the end of the century. And people of a certain age know that the best condensed milk comes from contented cows.

On the other hand, researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel and The Rockefeller University in New York found that environmental stress causes worms called nematodes (Caenorhabditis elegans) to produce sexier-looking babies which will give them a better chance for mating and the survival of the species. Something to think about on your next fishing trip?

The Sable Points Lighthouse Keepers Association in Ludington, Michigan was awarded $40,000 in preservation funds to perform much needed work on it despite the fact that the lighthouse is believed to be haunted by its previous owner because visitors often smell cigar smoke or bread baking, two activities the owner enjoyed before he died in 1965. They should use part of that money for a shop to sell bread and a case of Febreze for visitors.

Puerto Rico’s famed Arecibo Observatory, home of what was once the world’s most powerful radio telescope before the 1,000-foot-wide dish collapsed in late 2020, is once more open for visitors who can come and see what’s left of it. Some visitors just want to feel less guilty about breaking plates at home.

The California aerospace firm Venturi Astrolab is building an all-purpose space vehicle called FLEX (Flexible Logistics and Exploration) to be used to haul construction materials and astronauts on the Moon to build the infrastructure of a lunar base – photos show it looks like a giant baby carriage. Get ready for the really boring new sci-fi show: “Star Truck.”

While humans are terrified of real ones, physicists are hoping they’ll fall in love with robot shapeshifters made with a new soft “active matter” whose shape, movement and behavior are  controlled by a layer of nano-robots on its surface. Are android nightmares filled with electric shapeshifters? (Where is Philip K. Dick when we need him?)

Videos of Ernest Shackleton’s newly discovered Endurance shipwreck show what looks like a deep-sea squat lobster crawling on it and scientists think it’s a new species of lobster. If so, it will be the first best served with really cold butter.

A man in Ghana claims he gave a ride to a young woman in Shiashie who needed a lift to Lapaz, but he was forced to flee his car when she turned into a cobra. Well, that’s what he told his wife.