I Know, I Know
It sounds like a Doctor Who title from the Seventies, with the Doctor (Tom Baker iteration) and Sarah Jane trapped in the New York subway system as magma-monsters from the Earth's core wreak havoc on the city above ground -
Except not. One of these is only technically a tunnel. And for the other, neither the M83s nor the Teutons are keen to have anything official to do with it. Let's look at the latter first, because that's how we roll here. Art!
That pink underlined bit shows where the Teuton's Winterberg tunnel was. It ran underneath a ridgeline for 300 yards and allowed movement without becoming highlighted or silhouetted whilst traversing the ridge. The M83's knew all about it and, during the Nivelle Offensive in 1917, they put up a Caquot observation balloon to spot for artillery in order to hit it. You know that unfunny joke about cheese-eating surrender monkeys? It wasn't funny then, either. Accurate fire from very large-calibre guns destroyed both the entrance and exit, trapping 270 hapless Teuton soldiers, of whom only 3 survived and got out.
 |
| When still accessible |
The sites of both entrance and exit were lost over time, until a local historian and his son worked out exactly where the tunnel was. Well done the Malinowskis! This means both the French and German governments are being forced to face an issue they'd rather not, because they get on reasonably well today and don't want the fuss and bother caused by dis-interring 270 skeletons clad in ragged uniforms, or allowing archaeologists to dig the site, or opening up graves in German war graves in France. It would resurrect the First Unpleasantness when it's ghost has only just been laid to rest a century on.
An interesting world we live in!
Motley, what would happen if we -
- Stuck Your Head In A Particle Accelerator
"Nothing good" was my immediate response. I had stumbled across a Youtube presentation by Kyle Hill, whom you may remember as the host of "Because Science" and who left the channel under mysterious circumstances. More fool they, because I've not bothered to watch any more BS and am in fact uncertain if they still put it out. Art!
Thor. Or Kyle. Take your pick.
The presentation was titled "What happens if you put your head in a particle accelerator?" and you know Conrad, he cannot resist visiting anything with a title like that.
The title is not merely rhetorical, because it really happened to a hapless Ruffian physicist, Anatoly Bugorski. Essentially a string of bad things occurred to allow him to stick his head into a beam of protons; his work colleagues didn't shut the beam down in time, the room door was unlocked and the alarm light bulb had burned out (Sinister-era shoddiness at play). Art!
That proton beam was the end result of a particle accelerator in the Sinister Union, a monstrous piece of kit that was housed underground - hence me being allowed to call it a tunnel. It whizzed sub-atomic bits around and around to just under the speed of light, then slammed them into stuff to see what happened. Well, Anatoly happened. He suffered serious side-effects initially, which were alleviated with treatment, and - did not die. Not even a little bit.
Behold the Tunnels of DOOM.
(With apologies to J.R.R.Tolkein)
It turns out that the proton beam was so high-powered that it's terminal focus was well beyond the unfortunate physicist's head, so he got off light(speed)ly. All of this was, of course - obviously! - covered up by the Sinisters, because heaven help us if news of this ever leaked out, why it might affect the pistachio harvest in the Sanjak of Novi Pazar*! To date, this is the only known event where any member of Hom. Sap. has stuck their melon into a live stream of protons charged at 70 giga-electron volts. Plus, now that the Sinisters and their inability to either manage health and safety properly, or have lightbulbs that last, have gone it is likely to be the only such occurence.
I shouldn't have to say this, but the lawyers are cawing, so - DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. You will not gain superpowers. Alan Moore is a writer not a biologist.
Now We Have To Bonestell
Sorry, no alternative. Okay today we go for an image that Ol' Ches painted in 1951, or, if you like, six years before the space age began, i.e. 1957 when the Sinisters launched Sputnik. Art!
"Descending towards the Moon 1951"
This is pretty prescient, as this attitude is what Apollo 11 adopted in 1969 on approach to the lunar surface: feet-first with the engine going full blast (though they throttled it back to preserve fuel and manoeuvrability). Art!
Complicated shizzle
NO there are no pictures of it happening, bafoons! That would have required another, earlier lunar landing of at least automated camera equipment if not another LEM and associated crew. I know the hoax loonwaffles will bray loudly about lack of evidence of same, just refer them back to Bonestell**. Who seems to have over-estimated NASA's budget if they can afford to land THREE lunar probes simultaneously.
Finally -
We've just had the Moon up, as imagined a good 15 years before man actually walked there and discovered how ground-down everything was, after billions of years of meteor and cosmic ray erosion. So, let us now have a look at the surface of Mars, as witnessed by the Perseverance rover. Art!
It undoubtedly looks akin to bits of Arizona or Utah, and you might expect to see John Ford doing a bit of filming (he had a pash for Monument Valley), except - no. You would asphyxiate in the vanishingly thin Martian atmosphere, whilst also freezing to death in minutes thanks to the brisk ambient temperature of minus 1500C. Perseverance does not have to worry about either issue, unlike soft, squishy human beings. Also, the loonwaffles will have been out in force for this picture, pointing out 'OMH INCREDIBLE ALIEN ARTEFACKS!" proving that they are too excited to type properly and lack a spellchecker (also, brains).
I think with that last insulting shot we are well and truly done.
* I think it's now part of Serbia.
** Then punch them. Hard.
No comments:
Post a Comment