Are We Alone?

Let Me Just Say -
WASH YOUR DIRTY MINDS OUT!  For this is nothing to do with what you were fondly imagining, which is to say, filthy slanderous gossip that you don't dare let anyone else overhear, or there would be injunctions and lawsuits and cats and dogs living together, all that kind of dreadful shizzle.
     <adopts haughty, high-minded pose slightly undercut by flies being undone>
     Ahem!  Yes, well, what I meant was that ancient and much-posed philosophical question about Hom. Sap.'s place in the Universe.

So far, the only known ecosphere to bear life

     "Are We Alone?"  
     Here an aside.  Conrad had the idea for a future-war alien-invasion film, think along the lines of "Battle: Los Angeles" except set in Scunthorpe, and even came up with a film poster and tagline, where you would see Planet Earth in a gun-sight and the tagline "Are We Alone?" at the top, and an answer at the bottom: "No.  But we'll wish we were."

Would you like to comment on that, sir?  Sir?

     Anyway, back to that question.  It was one beloved of old science fiction writers, who could guess wildly and make stuff up out of whole cloth, because both they and astronomy had NO IDEA.
     Fast forward to 1995, when we get the first extrasolar planet detected.  To date there are now over 4,000 exoplanets detected and it's beginning to look as if all stars have a planetary system associated with them.
     And then we come to K2-18b.  Art?


     This is a variety of planet called a "Super-Earth" - no, Vulnavia, nothing to do with Kal El - which are comparatively small, rocky worlds with a mass from that of Earth up to about 10x the same.  What makes exobiologist's hearts beat faster about this one is that there is a very high chance that it's environment contains liquid water, one of the basic and most essential requirements for life.  
     The discovery is hedged about with provisos and qualifications and all sorts of scientific ifs and buts, but* the probability of our being alone has once more undergone a significant decrease.

Not like this, universe, please.  Please!

     Okay, motley, we can either indulge you in making paper flowers out of pastel-shaded tissue paper, or chain-sawing sculptures out of rotten tree stumps; your choice!

Hello Blue, How Are You?
Back to French folklore and the case of Bluebeard, that nobleman whose wives all "vanished" yet whom nobody seemed to bother over this minor technical point, even as he married another one.  Medieval or Early Modern Europe not a good place to be if you were female, it seems.   Bluebeard as Lady Chattel's Lover, you might say**.
     If you recall, we left this folktale yesterday at the point where Ol' Bluey rides off into the distance on business, having left his lovely wife in charge of the chateau.

Here he is, the frightful pop-eyed git

     He presents her with all the chateau keys and tells her NEVER to go in one particular chamber.  But, the stupid twonk, he leaves the key FOR THIS VERY SAME ROOM with her.  Blue of beard, popped of eye and stupid in the brain, one feels.  In fact, why even mention said chamber?  Is his wife likely to go snooping into every single room in the chateau the moment his back's turned***?
     You can probably guess what happens next.  Wilfully winsome Wifey, her curiosity aroused, takes the key and opens said Forbidden Chamber, and finds -
     But we shall leave that until tomorrow.  Still aiming to build a sense of suspense!

A sinister portent ...

Conrad Says Thanks -
For "narco-tanks".  Of course these things are not TANK in any accepted sense of the word, as they lack tracks for one thing, and a 3600 rotating turret mounting a large calibre artillery piece is lacking in every case.  Press hyperbole, don't you know.  Still, interesting subject.  Art?

Whoah! as Keanu would expostulate

     This beast has been assembled on a truck chassis, which is wise, as the weight of all that armour would probably crush a lesser vehicle, or cripple the suspension.  Though one suspects that a bump-free ride was rather low on the occupant's agenda.  There are no doors in the driver's cab, merely an access hold at the rear so it would be a bit of a sod to get out of were you in an accident; though, again, one doubts that Health And Safety criteria were high on the list of to-do facets of this beast's designers.
     It also has that final approbation, an acknowledgement that it has entered popular culture in splendid fashion: someone has made a model of it.  Art?

The zenith or nadir of something.

Egad!  The Stupid, It Burns!
And also bruises, and immolates and necrotises and a whole host of other things.
     Your Humble Scribe has just been reading the staggeringly stupid saga of "Red Mercury", a mythical substance supposedly able to cure the living of everything bar death, and perhaps that, too.  Art?

The real thing, in colour.  No red, sorry.

     Or is it an exotic super-explosive with yields in the megaton range from only a fist-sized amount?
     No.  To both.  There is no magic elixir, and never has been, and if you were to go consuming products that contain any amount of mercury, then you will DIE.  Horribly.  This is probably not what the fakers selling this guff mean when they say it "cures anything".  It certainly does, terminally.  Mercury is one of the heavy metals, which are all spectacularly bad for living things.
      As for the explosive matter, that would be anti-matter, which has only ever been produced in extremely advanced laboratories, and then only in microscopic amounts.  A lump of anti-matter of about a kilogram in mass would automatically convert into an explosion of 24 Gigatons, or 24 thousand million tons of HE.
     I think we'd have noticed that.

Yeah, right

Finally -
Just a brief grief, a minor venting over a dyspeptic cryptic.  How many of you would have gotten "CODICIL" as the solution to "A man who is willing may add it"?  Hmmmm?
     Let the mighty Wiki have the last word: "A codicil is a testamentary document similar but not necessarily identical to a will. In some jurisdictions, it may serve to amend, rather than replace, a previously executed will. In others, it may serve as an alternative to a will. In still others, there is no recognized distinction between a codicil and a will"
     Really, some of these compilers!

sic

*  Do you see what I d- O you do.
**  I think I've been spectacularly clever with that.
***  Cries of "Of course she will, she's a woman!" will be patently ignored.