Tiny Tentacled Microorganisms Named After Cthulu 54
First time accepted submitter mebates writes "Two newly discovered protists, found in the guts of termites, were named after monstrous cosmic entities featured in Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos as an ode to the sometimes strange and fascinating world of the microbe. From the article: 'The single-cell protists, Cthulhu macrofasciculumque and Cthylla microfasciculumque, help termites digest wood. The researchers decided to name them after monstrous cosmic entities featured in Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos as an ode to the sometimes strange and fascinating world of the microbe.
'When we first saw them under the microscope they had this unique motion, it looked almost like an octopus swimming,' says UBC researcher Erick James, lead author of the paper describing the new protists, published in the online journal PLoS ONE.'"
The Old Ones... (Score:5, Insightful)
Will drive you mad... look at how many times the phrase "featured in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos as an ode to the sometimes strange and fascinating world of the microbe." is used in the story??? MAD?!!!!
Indeed, the Great Old Ones shall not be mocked! Anyone got some tartar sauce?
Not your father's delicate psyche (Score:5, Insightful)
I've often wondered if people of the modern age would be as affected by an encounter with these creatures as the people of grandfather's time.
Raised on decades of science fiction, horror, twilight zone and outer limits, such an encounter would be grave and dangerous, but perhaps not quite as sanity-altering as it once was. We have context for comparison, the unusual would seem less... incomprehensible.
We're also starting to unravel the scientific basis of these unfathomable entities. I'll just leave this [arxiv.org] here.
Re:Not your father's delicate psyche (Score:3, Insightful)
Reading about a zombie/monster or watching a movie about them and meeting one face to face is quite different. I can watch a movie where people are being shot at and think it is cool. I have, unfortunately, been in a situation where I was shot at and it was not cool... At all. My friend was actually hit (in the leg) and he did not find it cool either.