Science is funny stuff. Things that we "knew" were impossible are proving really possible all the time, and I am not talking about pumpkin spice (which is neither a true spice, nor pumpkin and is, for me at least, disgusting).
No, I am going for things more mundane, but more profound. Like the sublime to the ridiculous.
The Sublime: Life is tougher than another thought.
Turns out that life, which we long thought was truly rare and hard to sustain, is one tough old broad. In testing for something else (sea floor debris from millions of years ago) has yielded life where it shouldn't be. In this case it was sponges and barnacles.
Scientists drilled a hole through 2700 feet / 900 meters (about a 1/2 mile) of ice sheet to get to the sea floor. In a case of bad luck, turned amazing find, they did not hit the seafloor mud, but a single (but big) boulder that was in the way. But that boulder held at least 11 sponges and 20+ other items that are probably barnacles.
Why is this amazing? There is no sunlight down there. Where do they get nutrients? These are probably living off filter currents, but the closest open water is 160 mies away and the closest area to see sunlight is over 350 miles away! Science has no answers yet.
The Ridiculous: Wombats' scat is square
Yes, despite my father's joke (Why isn't poop tapered? Because if it was square, your butt would snap shut), it turns out some shit is, indeed, square. In this case Wombat poop. Turns out, after many years of research, they have found that Wombat's large intestines, at least the last 8% of it, is elastic and creates cubes by inflating and collapsing areas during formation. Seriously.
Now you may think this has no effect on mankind (unless one wanted to make a poop-based igloo, in which case, wombat poop would be the perfect building blocks), but you'd be wrong. I mean wrong about human implications, not the wombat based scat igloo. In fact, there is an interesting implication. Humans can make cubes only from a cube shaped mold or by cutting something into blocks. But the use of flexible methods to make cubes is a completely different method, and one that might be useful in some situations!
The Mundane: Humans Still Can't Pick Whom to Love
Lindsey Graham (code name Lady G from the Washington Chapter of the Homosexual Sex-Workers Union) is suffering from the Republican Divorce (r) and cannot stand to watching Mommy and Daddy fighting.
To which I must say, suck it up Buttercup; we all had to watch our parents fight after the divorce.
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