Monthly Archives: November 2006

In scores of science fiction stories, hapless adventurers find themselves unwittingly introduced to the vacuum of space without proper protection. There is often an alarming cacophony of screams and gasps as the increasingly bloated humans writhe and spasm. Their exposed veins and eyeballs soon bulge in what is clearly a disagreeable manner. The ill-fated adventurers rapidly swell like over-inflated balloons, ultimately bursting in a gruesome spray of blood.

As is true with many subjects, this representation in popular culture does not reflect the reality of exposure to outer space. Ever since humanity first began to probe outside of our protective atmosphere, a number of live organisms have been exposed to vacuum, both deliberately and otherwise. By combining these experiences with our knowledge of outer space, scientists have a pretty clear idea of what would happen if an unprotected human slipped into the cold, airless void.

Read the rest of this Article ▶

We took a few days off for the US Thanksgiving holiday, but now we’re back. We’ll be splitting the lickety to get a new article published, and within the next few days we anticipate finishing a few new features. We’ll keep you apprised of our progress.

The world has many moist, warm, and dark cavities where phobia-inspiring organisms quietly lurk. The tropical climate of South America’s Amazon jungle has an unnaturally large number of such pockets, and consequently that region is home to unnaturally large specimens.

One such example is the Scolopendra gigantea, a venomous, red-maroon centipede with forty-six yellow-tinted legs. These centipedes are the largest in the world, and they are more commonly known as Amazonian giant centipedes due to their massive size. Adults commonly reach lengths of over thirty-five centimeters– the length of a man’s forearm. Not only are these creatures very swift runners, but they are also highly adept climbers, a skill which allows them to scale walls to enjoy some surprisingly ambitious prey.

Read the rest of this Short ▶

I just wanted to pop in and mention that we’ve made a few subtle additions to the site over the past few days. We created a Flickr photostream as an alternate way of staying abreast of updates, we scrubbed some of the lameness off of our CafePress logo store, and we erected a page to list our recommended books and DVDs. If you happen to buy any stuff from those last two links, Damn Interesting will receive a fistful of pipin’-hot nickels.

Links to the new features have been added to the About and Store menus at the top of the page. We also have a few more updates planned for the coming weeks. Of course if you ever have any damn interesting suggestions, just let us know. Especially if it involves pie.

It seems that most every culture has a legend of a great society, ripe with wealth and wisdom, which is lost to the sea. To westerners these are the stories of Atlantis or Thule. To many of the peoples of the South Pacific it is Lemuria or Menehune. To Asians it is called Mu, and was home to people who could fly and who drank an elixir that would cease aging.

After years of searching, and combing the Pacific for a possible lost land that could have been the root of one of these legends, it is clear that there is no extra continent in the sea. However, in 1986, a SCUBA diver, Kihachiro Aratake, diving off the coast of the island of Yonaguni-jima discovered something that may lend credence to the existence of Mu or Lemuria. On the sea floor he found vast geometric structures cut out of the rock. There was evidence of stairs, and improbable angles in the stone. He marked the location for future divers, and in the intervening years these undersea ruins have come to be known as the “Yonaguni Monuments”.

Efforts to date the monument are derived from the last time the area was above sea level, which would have been approximately 8,000-10,000 years ago– about 3-5 millennia before Egypt’s pyramids were erected. If the monuments were indeed built by humankind, it would require some dramatic revisions to the accepted chronological history of humanity.

Read the rest of this Short ▶