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22lb Ice Blocks From the Sky 359

Posted by chrisd from the party-ice-from-above dept.
cavedwler writes "An article http://www.msnbc.com/news/814100.asp?0dm=-23ET over on MSNBC has an interesting writeup about large ice blocks forming in the upper atmosphere on CLEAR days. Pretty interesting read." The article talks about how this could be a harbinger of massive climactic change. Either way, I'd prefer to not have one of these things smack into my house.
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22lb Ice Blocks From the Sky More

22lb Ice Blocks From the Sky

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  • Let's hear it: (Score:5, Funny)

    by jlowery ( 47102 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @07:03PM (#4363835)
    I scream!
    You scream!
    We all scream for ice-- SPLAT!

  • Best line from the article (Score:3, Funny)

    by medeii ( 472309 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @07:04PM (#4363837)
    "But geologist Roger Buick of the University of Washington in Seattle told the same publication ..." Somehow I think that the guy from Colorado should back off, seeing as someone from Washington would be much more familiar with rain.

  • I was swirling it above Spain trying to look down Xui Xuis top.

    Sincerely,

    --Galacticus

  • My fair ice block (Score:5, Funny)

    by markwusinich ( 126760 ) <markwusinich@yahoo.com> on Monday September 30, 2002 @07:05PM (#4363851) Homepage Journal
    The ice in Spain falls mainly on your windshield.

  • So (Score:4, Funny)

    by teslatug ( 543527 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @07:05PM (#4363853)
    Anybody contacted Taco Bell yet?

    Hey hey, put that chunk of ice away *ducks*

  • Understatement of the year (Score:5, Funny)

    by capt.Hij ( 318203 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @07:07PM (#4363870) Homepage Journal
    provides an explanation for a spectacular phenomenon.

    A quick look on mathsci.net shows other papers that they have published:

    "Lake Superior: Gosh it sure is a lot of water," Journal of Hydrologic modeling.

    • But seriously (Score:5, Informative)

      by thelexx ( 237096 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @07:54PM (#4364160)
      From his website [rediris.es]:

      Martinez-Frias has also published around 130 articles in scientific and technical publications (mainly specialised in Earth Sciences -- Geology, Economic Geology, Mineralium Deposita, Computer and Geoscience, Neues Jahrbuch fur Mineralogy, Geotimes, GeoMarine Letters, Episodes, Geological Magazine, Applied Geochemistry, Journal of Chromatography, AMBIO, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, Meteoritics and Planetary Science, etc.), in high profile multidisciplinary publications (Nature), high prestige international books (Springer-Verlag, Geological Society) in popular magazines, (Mundo Cientifico, Fronteras de la Ciencia y la Tecnología) and in the Scientific supplements of national newspapers (ie El Pais, El Mundo, ABC).

      Martinez-Frias is the author of the book "Sulfuros y Sulfosales de Metales Nobles" and co-editor of several books, among which are; "Recursos Minerales de España" (CSIC 1478p) (Spanish Mineral Resources), "Geologia y Metalogenia en Ambientes Oceanicos. Depósitos Hidrotermales Submarinos (Geology and Metallogeny of Seafloor Hydrothermal Deposits) (IEO, 162p) and "Esto es Imposible" (Aguilar, 320p).

  • Holy.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by GigsVT ( 208848 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @07:09PM (#4363884) Journal
    Jesus [...] has spent the last two and a half years investigating so-called megacryometeors

    Cut the guy some slack, you think it's easy being the son of God?

  • "It's not water from airplane toilets. ... Its isotopic composition bears the signature ... of Iberian rain"

    What's with the dramatic pauses? I was expecting a violin crash after he uttered "Iberian rain".

    Back to the topic, what are we to glean from such a shallow article from an entertainment company? Can we get an article from a scientific journal next time? Is this really a new phenomenon, or is it that accounts of ice falling from the sky are discounted? After all, you can't expect the evidence to last very long on a balmy summer day...

  • Another Slashdot formula crapsule... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Wraithlyn ( 133796 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @07:13PM (#4363917)
    Don't they get sick of using the same template? To wit:

    "An article over at [some news site] has an article about [some subject]. Pretty interesting read. They talk about [cut n paste something from article]. Either way, [say something stupidly obvious]."

    Sorry. It's monday.

  • Acts of God (Score:4, Funny)

    by sssmashy ( 612587 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @07:14PM (#4363918)
    I'm not a religious man, but you ever get nailed by a 30kg block of ice falling from a clear sky, you can be pretty sure God was trying to tell you something.

  • Kinda fishy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sawilson ( 317999 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @07:20PM (#4363972) Homepage
    The article talks about hail, but they fail to
    mention that hail ONLY comes from thunderstorms.
    Just like tornadoes ONLY come from thunderstorms.
    And almost all lighting comes from, you guessed it,
    thunderstorms. They also fail to talk about the
    freezing level. That's how a thunderstorm becomes
    a thunderstorm. A cumulus cloud that's growing
    upwards because of vorticity (air rising fast)
    grows past the freezing level. The top of the
    cloud and the bottom of the cloud get different
    charges and blammo, you have a big floating battery in the
    sky. The hail forms because there are rapidly
    moving columns of air moving up and down
    in the cloud and water trapped in that column
    gets frozen, recoated with water, frozen again,
    etc.

    The ice clouds he's talking about are
    cirrus clouds of some kind. That's basically
    any cloud made up of super tiny ice crystals
    because they are above the freezing level.
    a VERY VERY rare type of cloud is called
    cirrocumulus. This is ice crystal clouds in
    the shape of the puffy white clouds called
    cumulus that sometimes turn into thunderstorms.
    The reason these clouds are so rare is because
    they are unbelievably heavy. It takes an
    incredible amount of 'vorticity' to keep
    them up there, and they don't last long.
    If you ever see very high puffy cottonball
    looking clouds, there's a great chance you'll
    have a thunderstorm soon (24-48 hours) because
    vorticity (air rising fast) is one of the major
    things needed. There is NO WAY upper atmosphere
    vorticity is going to hold water in the air
    long enough for it to weigh 10 friggin pounds.
    There is no way that ice clouds would clump
    together and form ice. There is simply no force
    there to do that work. You might get a ball of
    something more like snow, but definitely not
    ice. I'd be more willing to bet some smartass
    with a catapult is having fun at the ice factory.
    If they said this was related to thunderstorm
    activity, I might buy it. But on a clear day?
    No way.

    • Re:Kinda fishy (Score:5, Informative)

      by rlk ( 1089 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @07:57PM (#4364169)
      Both cirrus and cirrocumulus are formed from tiny ice crystals (cirrocumulus is when small convective cells form within the cloud). A lot of cirrus is actually of convective origin, the blowoff from thunderstorms.

      Vorticity actually means rotation (turning) of the air, not lifting. However, positive (cyclonic) vorticity near the surface is associated with lifting of the air. That doesn't necessarily mean dramatic convective lifting that produces thunderstorms, but air will be lifted in those regions.

      Hail forms in thunderstorms with strong updrafts. These updrafts are needed to keep the hailstones from simply falling out of the cloud. In order to get giant hailstones, the updraft has to be very strong indeed.

      A 35 pound chunk of ice is on the order of a 10-inch cube (if it's really solid). That's much bigger than any hailstone ever recorded; the biggest known was about 7 inches long and 4-5 inches on the short axis; hailstones are rarely that solid, and it probably didn't weigh more than 5 pounds or thereabouts. I think it fell in Coffeyville, Kansas during a severe thunderstorm (surely a supercell, with a very persistent, rotating updraft, that may well have spawned a tornado). This isn't rocket science; think about what the terminal velocity of a 35 pound chunk of ice is, and the updraft has to be close to that in velocity.

      Any situation where the air is rising that violently is either going to have a very obvious cloud (read: thunderstorm) associated with it; the heat released by the condensation of the water makes the air more buoyant, and hence increases the lift. A dry thermal isn't going to approach that kind of velocity, and even if it did, it would be...well...dry.

      What all of that basically amounts to is...well...that dog don't hunt. The only realistic source of that kind of thing is water being dumped by airplanes at high enough altitudes so that it has time to freeze before reaching the surface. A chunk of ice that big should be easy to save long enough to be examined; they should give a few samples to NOAA, say, and let them inspect it.
      • "The only realistic source of that kind of thing is water being dumped by airplanes ..."

        How about Louis Franks ice comets [slashdot.org]?

      • Re:Kinda fishy (Score:3, Interesting)

        by GuidoDEV ( 57554 )
        > What all of that basically amounts to is...well...that dog don't hunt. The only realistic
        > source of that kind of thing is water being dumped by airplanes at high enough altitudes so
        > that it has time to freeze before reaching the surface. A chunk of ice that big should be easy to
        > save long enough to be examined; they should give a few samples to NOAA, say, and let them inspect
        > it.

        Agreed. I'd like to see some hard evidence of this given our present knowledge of precipitation formation and cloud physics (which admittedly is pretty limited, but certainly precludes events of these kinds).

        The problem I have with the airplane theory, however, is that the instant that the water is ejected from the plane it will break up into thousands upon thousands of tiny drops which will instantly freeze at that altitude. A large mass of water would not freeze instantly due to its large heat capacity, yet at the same time it will not remain together due to the various forces yanking it apart (esp. friction).

        So in other words our "megacryometeor" would (for it to form in the 4-9km AGL range) have to grow from a infinitesimally small nucleus (since allegedly the composition of these things is similar to the composition of rain) to the size of at least a basketball before it strikes the earth. Keep in mind that it can't simply start out as a mass of water the size of a basketball (as mentioned earlier), and thus must grow slowly enough to have all the water freeze/vapor condense onto it without losing it all, and yet somehow stay up in the air without the support of a strong upward current of air to balance out its terminal velocity, which will be on the order of 50 m/s (110mph) by the time it is the size of a baseball, let alone a basketball or more. Note that these upward currents of this magnitude occur *only* in the presence of strong thunderstorms.

        The only thing I can think of that might remotely be able to do something like this is a very strong jet stream placed favorably next to a mountain range. You could then possibly have very strong vertical winds (this is very favorable for cloud formation, however) up to and even exceeding 50 m/s, and under *just* the right conditions you could probably grow a chunk of ice from nothing other than vapor over a long period of time...however we're talking about growth rates on the order of days and even weeks in the absence of clouds for a chunk of ice of any reasonable size. Thus even this highly idealized setup is not realistic, as it would have to persist steady-state for weeks.

        In short, there could be some really weird process out there we haven't the foggiest notion about that is causing this, but I'll believe it when I see it...

        • Re:Kinda fishy (Score:4, Informative)

          by ScottBob ( 244972 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @11:24PM (#4365148)
          The problem I have with the airplane theory, however, is that the instant that the water is ejected from the plane it will break up into thousands upon thousands of tiny drops which will instantly freeze at that altitude. A large mass of water would not freeze instantly due to its large heat capacity, yet at the same time it will not remain together due to the various forces yanking it apart (esp. friction).

          One news report that I saw not too long ago was that an ice block smashed through the roof of a house, and investigators on the scene said it came from an airplane. Indeed, it was the same color of blue as the disinfectant in the airplane toilet flushing water. IIRC, they said that the holding tank had a slow leak, and the water made its way to the exterior of the fuselage (sucked through a hole from a popped rivet, perhaps) where it was broken up into a spray by the air rushing past. The spray collected and instantly froze directly behind the leak on the cold aluminum skin where one of the tail fins joined to the fuselage, collecting and forming a sizeable ball of blue ice. (Heating due to friction would have been negligeable here.) As the plane approached for a landing, slowing down and descending into a warmer layer of air, the aluminum skin conducted just enough heat to cause the blob of ice to separate from the surface and fall, crashing through the roof. Into the bathroom of the house. Imagine the odds.
    • But geologist Roger Buick of the University of Washington in Seattle told the same publication that a model created by Martinez-Frias and his team showing ice can form on a clear day was an "important advance in that it thoroughly documents and provides an explanation for a spectacular phenomenon"
      • Yup. A geologist. That would be like having a
        dentist give me his expert opinion on some
        matter related to brain surgury.
        • While that is true, they likely have more knoweledge to base an opinion on than the poster. That would be true, if at the very least, the geologist had read the explanation given by those studying the 'ice blocks'.
      • But geologist Roger Buick of the University of Washington in Seattle told the same publication that a model created by Martinez-Frias and his team showing ice can form on a clear day was an "important advance in that it thoroughly documents and provides an explanation for a spectacular phenomenon"
        Take a look at Roger Buick [washington.edu]. I don't think I want to argue with him. But as a specialist in Pre-Cambrian Life, Environments, and Astrobiology it's not clear that he would know much about cloud formation.

    • Re:Kinda fishy (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Jucius Maximus ( 229128 )
      "I'd be more willing to bet some smartass with a catapult is having fun at the ice factory."

      It must be some monster catapult, considering that these ice hunks have hit in Spain, Australia and Mexico. Or perhaps it is the mutual hobby of ice factory workers all over the world.

    • And almost all lighting comes from, you guessed it, thunderstorms

      Err, I think you will find that when there is lightning thunder will invariably follow, unless of course the two events coincide at a point you had chosen to occupy in space-time.

      Ergo all occasions at which lightning is present will be definition be classified as thunder storms and no event in which lightning is not present can be so classified.

      • Re:Kinda fishy (Score:3, Informative)

        by sawilson ( 317999 )
        Not true.

        I said almost, because there are other events that
        can cause lightning. Volcanic eruptions and massive
        smoke clouds from forest fires come to mind.

        However, in accordance with the FMH-1b
        (Federal Meteorlogical Handbook) that I had to use
        as both a weather forecaster, and weather observer,
        YES. In the interests of flight safety, any lightning
        observed will generate an immediate SP or (special)
        observation to be automatically taken and
        recorded as a thunderstorm. (if my memory serves
        me correctly. It's been a while)
        • In the interests of flight safety, any lightning observed will generate an immediate SP or (special) observation to be automatically taken and recorded as a thunderstorm.

          The way I would see it, a volvano erruption could cause a thunderstorm...

          Actually, one event that you do list might be the exception is a nuclear explosion. Lightning has certainly been observed in mushroom clouds, however you are not going to be hearing any thunder 'cos there is another noise thats a lot louder....

    • Re:Kinda fishy (Score:3, Funny)

      by isorox ( 205688 )
      And almost all lighting comes from, you guessed it,thunderstorms.

      Y'know, I always thought that lighting came from computer monitors and the sun

  • It's started (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rjamestaylor ( 117847 ) <rjamestaylor@gmail.com> on Monday September 30, 2002 @07:21PM (#4363981) Journal

    It has started:

    • And great (excessively oppressive) hailstones,

    • as heavy as a talent [between fifty and sixty pounds],
      of immense size, fell from the sky on the people;
      and men blasphemed God for the plague of the hail,
      so very great was [the torture] of that plague.
      (Revelation 16:21 [biblegateway.com])

    Trust me; Fundamentalist sermons will be referring to this story for a long time to come.

  • Obvious solution ..... (Score:5, Funny)

    by binaryDigit ( 557647 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @07:26PM (#4364008)
    Just get everyone to run dual proccie Itanium2's. The things will melt before they get within a 1000ft of any suitably equipped home.
  • Yeah, I heard this one before. And the big bad wolf is going to come eat us all, right? You go hide in your cave. OK, see you later. Have fun. What the hell is--
    ::BONK!::

  • The Real Question (Score:4, Interesting)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @07:35PM (#4364065) Journal

    for me is not whether or not ice can form. Of course it can form. The question in my mind is what kind of wind can sustain such a large glob?

    Traditional hailstones form in the updrafts of thunderstorms--the more forceful the updraft, the larger the hailstones. This begs the question of what kind of wind is keeping these things aloft and allowing them to form. The answer could be easily found in a wind tunnel. What you need to know is the terminal velocity of these ice "blocks". I assume they are not actually blocks. That would just be too wierd.

    Perhaps, there is some kind of ice structure that forms and has a very low terminal velocity... ice parachutes with thick centers? Then, as it falls through the atmosphere whatever it is that reduces the terminal velocity melts, leaving the "payload".

    Also, is there any correlation between these things and anything else (like contrails?). If there is, then maybe we could use doppler RADAR to look for clear-air updrafts, and a telescope to view these things as they form. Of course, maybe these things are highly localized--little tornados in the upper atmosphere... maybe they are smaller than the resolution of the RADAR.

    At any rate, I just hope these things stay away from my head.

    • Re:The Real Question (Score:2, Informative)

      by landtuna ( 18187 )
      Radar wouldn't really be able to help you much here. Weather radar's resolution is on the order of tens of meters, and the stuff you're looking at would need to be somewhat reflective to radar.

      The wind that's holding up the block wouldn't be very visible either if it really was in a clear sky. Rain reflects back to the radar, but plain wind isn't very easy to see.
    • Ok, I've read that the terminal velocity of a man falling is somewhere around 120mph. Since I never see the weight of these falling people mentioned, lets say he weighs around... 180 lbs sound good? Maybe 200 for kicks and grins. So lets divide 120 by 200 ... That's approximately .6 mph per pound. It's looking like (if my busted math is correct) that it'd take a sustained updraft of at least 13.2 mph to keep the thing aloft (keeping in mind it doesn't start out at 22 lbs), probably more given the density of a 22 lb block of ice. I'll cheat and say 20-25mph to keep it aloft. if I were just looking at the numbers I'd say it could work, but then you have to figure in crap like stability of the airmass, how long a 20 mph updraft can be sustained while the thing froze, ambient temperature, etc, etc... It seems pretty damn unlikely conditions would stay stable long enough for it to form. But then, I'm far from a meteorologist... I could see the ice parachute thing, but the conditions required to form such a delicate structure... Yeesh...
  • I have seen one of these things. Last Spring I was outside doing yard work when I head a loud thunk. I walk over to where the noise came from and there was a LARGE ball of ice about the size of a basketball. The odd thing was, it was a clear day. I'm glad to finally know it wasn't just God trying to smite me or something. :-)
  • I see lots of people asking basic questions such as "What about...?" and "What if...?" and "How come...?" Come on people, get past the popsci article and go straight to the source [rediris.es] from the guy himself [rediris.es].
    • I see lots of people asking basic questions such as "What about...?" and "What if...?" and "How come...?"

      Yeah, well I went and looked at those links and while the first one contains lots of explainations as to what didn't cause the ice blobs to form, there was no clear theory as to what did. There was, however, quite a number of links to sites and reports by the various Chicken Little departments of the UN, NASA, etc.
      So, as far as I can tell, this dude says "it's not meteors, comets, or frozen piss from planes, so it must be global warming."

  • Either Way (Score:3, Funny)

    by nihilogos ( 87025 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @07:49PM (#4364137)
    i will be outside holding up a large bucket of cointreau
  • The article talks about how this could be a harbinger of massive climactic change.

    Pfft. The media talks about how EVERYTHING could be a harbinger of massive climactic change, and furthermore how it's OBVIOUSLY the fault of technology and Western democracy.

    I've quit listening to their made-up crap. It's blips of statistical noise overlying a long-term cycle of temperature variations that pre-existed any human life.

    Climate change has become grant-grubbing junk science harnessed to the service of failed leftist political ideologies.

    Pay no attention to the watermelon wackos. Buy that SUV if you want one and drive on without guilt!

    -ccm

  • Jan. 8 2000 - Spain (Score:5, Informative)

    by YearOfTheDragon ( 527417 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @08:07PM (#4364241) Homepage
    On Jan. 8 2000, news spread through the media in Spain that a chunk of ice fell from clear skies and hit a car in Tocina, a village close to Seville.: Hailstones fall from clear Spanish skies [agiweb.org]


    When and where falled the spanish Ice Blocks:
    Lluvia de Hidrometeoros [anomalia.org](Spanish)
    cronology [worldonline.es](Spanish)

    Aeroliting for profit & fun: How to make an aerolite [wanadoo.es] (Spanish)
    Are aerolites alien creatures? [retecal.es](Spanish)

  • Good Aim (Score:2, Funny)

    by Konster ( 252488 )
    ....from one bathroom to another!

    http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/nypost/index.html?ts =1 033433205
  • We should have been listening to chicken little all along?

  • Those ice blocks could simply be the remainders of Louis A. Frank's ice comets [astronomynow.com]. More info also here [nasda.go.jp], here [panspermia.org], and here [uiowa.edu] and if you understand dutch, here [www.vpro.nl]

    Why is everything that seems newly discovered suddenly a sign of impending doom?

  • Where is Charles Fort when you really need him? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @08:34PM (#4364387) Homepage
    Stories about weird stuff falling from the sky have been with us for millennia. Charles Fort (1874-1932) devoted his life to collecting newspaper clippings of rains of fungi, formless masses of protoplasm, hatchets, masks, the ceremonial regalia of savages, and stones--with and without inscriptions. One of his accounts, The Book of the Damned is online here. [resologist.net] (By "the damned," he means data that science refuses to accept).Written in an almost poetic, tart, prose style, it is very readable. He talks of rains of "Butter and beef and blood and a stone with strange inscriptions upon it." Most of his information was obtained from newspaper accounts.

    I'm inclined to take a very skeptical view of any stories about weird stuff falling from the sky. Maybe it's true about the blocks of ice, and maybe Fort's falls of frogs and fishes were true, and maybe other accounts of worms, snails mussels, snakes, turtles, and even a whole calf are true.

    But I'd want to see heavier evidence than an MSNBC story.

    Anyway, Fort would have loved this one.

  • Ice blocks might be climate change? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mesocyclone ( 80188 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @08:54PM (#4364474) Homepage Journal
    It seems that every news article about weather events these days mentions a possible connection to climate change! Has it occurred to anyone that since there is a lot of money for climate change research, scientists, in response to the inevitable reporter question, will of course say it *might* have something to do with climate change.

    It is time for a new fear. Climate change is getting trite!
  • Let's do the math. If the ice falls from 6 mi, and assuming no friction and melting (the perfect physics world), then:

    6 mi * 1600 m/mi = 9600 m
    Kinetic Energy = Potential Energy, so 0.5*m*v^2 = m*g*h, and the m's cancel, and then we solve for v:
    v=sqrt(2*g*h)
    h=9600m, g=approx. 9.5 m/s^2 at that height.
    Therefore, the ice will hit the ground at about 430 m/s, almost the speed of sound!

  • The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

    The above opinion has been created without basis or research into the referenced articles.

  • Dubious Science (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Webmoth ( 75878 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @10:30PM (#4364920) Homepage
    "Martinez-Frias said only around a fifth of the ice meteors are ever found."

    Ermm... how do they count what they haven't seen?

    "Martinez-Frias suggests that because global warming involves one level of the atmosphere getting colder while another gets hotter, some ice clouds now remain longer."

    Logic dictates that if global warming causes one level to get colder while another gets warmer, that global cooling would cause one level to get warmer while another gets colder. Am I repeating myself? And besides, this is a suggestion, not a formulated hypothesis based on evidence. At least not yet.

    Scientific fact is that water vapor and carbon dioxide are the most abundant greenhouse gas. As our combustible-fuel appliances become more efficient, there are less hydrocarbon emissions and more H20 and C02 emitted; the net effect on greenhouse gases is the same. Besides, it has been argued that a single volcanic eruption has a far greater effect (neg or pos, you decide) on the atmosphere than the entire history of mankind burning stuff.

    One more thing: there's no such thing az a ZEV (Zero-Emission-Vehicle). Electric is displaced emissions -- unless your power is hydro (and "we all know how bad that is for the fishies"). The manufacture of solar cells and batteries/fuel cells require the use -- and disposal -- of tons of toxic chemicals. Nuke also involves toxic waste (nevermind it's the cleanest and safest form of electricity, it's gotten a bad rap by the actions of irresponsible people).

    To say that man (woman too!!) is causing global warming is a crock. If we all went back to eating wooly mammoth cooked over teradactyl dung, I don't think we'd notice any difference in the rate of global climate change.

  • What's next, penguins raining down on Redmond?

  • Is chicken little going to become a /. category, or just a daily annoyance?

    Since we are dusting off the 1970's shoes styles, we might as well pull out the good old fashioned scare mongering too.

    For those who have not seen a good example of history repeating itself, sit back and watch the 70's replay themselves. But I must warn you, the stories have to get much more spectacular before the trend comes to a close.

    The whole scene can be put into perspective if you view it from a great distance. This should be fodder for some great flame wars on motives.
  • The ice is really falling off of a new US military stealth aircraft that uses UFO technology! Unknown Freezing Objects.

    -
  • "I'm not worried that a block of ice might fall on your head"

    Well Buster, I'm not so worried about YOUR head either!

    "It's very easy to tell real and false ice blocks apart."

    False ice? I have heard of people forging money, IDs, painting and even dog poop (for their percieved entertainment value, not their nutritional value) but this has got to take the fake cake. Fake ice? Does he mean one of those clear plastic ice cubes with a fly inside you dropped into the lemonade glasses of your friends when you were a kid?

    "Glad you came professor, we need to know if it's real ice or just an imposter."
    "This *holds it up to the light* is a block of fake ice."
    "Ohh, but Professor, how can you tell?
    "It has a fake fly in it!"

  • I assume the "22 pounds" was translated from an original "10 kilograms". But "10" there is a kind of generic number - maybe meaning "between 5 and 50" in this context - so I think "20 pounds" would actually have been a better translation.

    Danny.

  • I think that it is a simpler explanation and thus MORE likely that this is just a bunch of kids who are testing a trebuchet.

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