BBC News (Bouncy's Broadcasting Castle)

[Quatermass]

A very young baby humpback whale stranded itself right on the beach at the Gold Coast yesterday and a digger was brought in to dig a trench to help drag it back to the ocean.... in the hopes that its call would reunite it with its mother. (alot of whales off our coast right now) as whales can hear for a long way.

They have had helicopters out checking and they THINK they have spotted the calf with its mother. Lots of mums and bubs out there. Hopefully the little one is safe and well now with Mum.


http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-na ... 1ijru.html

So very sad... they little baby whale washed back up on the beach today and was so ill and distressed they had to put it down. Poor little thing.... poor mother whale.

....

[meerkat]

A very young baby humpback whale stranded itself right on the beach at the Gold Coast yesterday and a digger was brought in to dig a trench to help drag it back to the ocean.... in the hopes that its call would reunite it with its mother. (alot of whales off our coast right now) as whales can hear for a long way.

They have had helicopters out checking and they THINK they have spotted the calf with its mother. Lots of mums and bubs out there. Hopefully the little one is safe and well now with Mum.


http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-na ... 1ijru.html

So very sad... they little baby whale washed back up on the beach today and was so ill and distressed they had to put it down. Poor little thing.... poor mother whale.

Are they going to do an autopsy to see why he kept beaching?

[Quatermass]

Are they going to do an autopsy to see why he kept beaching?

All I heard was that they were going to bury the poor sod.

[meerkat]

Wouldn't it be better to bury him at sea and then he'll go back into recycling the ocean?

[Quatermass]

Wouldn't it be better to bury him at sea and then he'll go back into recycling the ocean?

Might wash back up again. I believe that first time was drama, the second time was tragedy, and the third time would be comedy of the darkest sort.

[Quatermass]

Anyway, now for some less depressing news.

Possible evidence for panspermia found in Australian meteorite.

[Dotsie]

Meterorites are awash with molecules like this, all that solar energy is good for cooking up interesting amino acids and nucleotides. Seems to me though that it wouldn't be very easy for the molceules to get out - probably easier if the same processes occurred on Earth. 3.8 billion years ago the Earth was a pretty interesting place.

[Bouncy Castle]

Except the Internet connections were a bit patchy!

[meerkat]

[Quatermass]

Meterorites are awash with molecules like this, all that solar energy is good for cooking up interesting amino acids and nucleotides. Seems to me though that it wouldn't be very easy for the molceules to get out - probably easier if the same processes occurred on Earth. 3.8 billion years ago the Earth was a pretty interesting place.

Interesting? Well, I suppose a reducing atmosphere, volcanic eruptions, and then a planet the size of Mars smacking into you (okay, that was earlier, but I wanted to make a point) could be classified as interesting. As in, 'may you live in interesting times'.

But I do agree. Life is more likely to evolve on Earth than it is to evolve in a meteorite. Still, there's some hardy little microbes out there. While researching my novel, I stumbled across the bacteria Deinococcus radiodurans. That thing is the Rasputin of microbes. Wouldn't you agree, Dotsie?

[Dotsie]

Absolutely - it can withstand orders of magnitude more radiation than any other organism we know of (except the Hulk, and look what happened to him). It's not really clear why, except that it might be a side-effect of a different way of withstanding extremely dry conditions (which really messes with your DNA).

[Dotsie]

D'ya know, I could talk about germs and the like all day. But nobody seems to want to listen

[Bouncy Castle]

D'ya know, I could talk about germs and the like all day. But nobody seems to want to listen

[Dotsie]

Nooo! Deinococcus won't make you poorly! Honest!

[Bouncy Castle]

Anything with the word coccus at the end scares me.