the tree of woe

I love NewScientist.com.  It’s a fountain of unending mirth for me. This morning I read about a planet in some other solar system that is covered in ice, but is also super close to its sun, so the ice on the surface is 575 degrees.

This is, of course, the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.  The article goes on:

“If you bring Neptune nearer to the Sun and it’s heated outside to 300° C, that’s exactly what you get,”

You know what? If you actually did bring Neptune closer to the sun, we wouldn’t all stand around saying, “Oh. Now I understand the way temperature and atmospheric pressure contribute to the uniqueness of the composition of the surface of GJ 436.” We would be saying “OHMYGOODNESS,” because you had just moved Neptune nearer to the Sun.

As far as theories about what could be underneath the surface,

…there could be a region where the water is in a quasi-liquid state. “It could pass through a strange region where it’s not quite solid and not quite liquid,”

Whatever. After all this talk about hot ice and especially after you said you could push Neptune around like a puck on an air hockey table, I’m putting no faith in you and your supposed yogurt planet.

Every now and then, something amazing happens in the world. Something amazing happened recently, and I’d like to tell you about it.

First, some background:

• Panda bears are awesome.
• Rainbows are awesome.
• Neat pictures are also awesome.
• Vomiting isn’t that awesome, but can be under the right circumstances(as it turns out.)

Now, when the inner six planets are all aligned, when the tides ebb and flow at just the right times, and when the Blue Star Kachina makes its appearance in the heavens, the Fifth World emerges, and someone creates a website of a panda vomiting neat pictures and rainbows, and the world is a better place for it.