Taomeow Posted October 13 (edited) Comet Tsuchinshan, which showed up the last time 80,000 years ago and won't be visiting Earth for another 80,000, has become visible for the first time in our parts just yesterday. Still a bit dim, but it will be getting closer, and accordingly look bigger and brighter, over the next couple of weeks. The strange part is this, from the official description: "Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) was discovered by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) on 22 February 2023 and it was also independently observed a few weeks before in January 2023 at the Tsuchinshan Chinese Observatory (Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences)." Wait a minute... Is my IQ going or is something else going, like the last vestiges of integrity in science? How could it have been "also independently observed" a few weeks earlier? Isn't it what they should call "it was discovered?" Discovered at the Chinese observatory -- and anyone who later claims that they "independently" discovered the same thing should be considered the party that "also independently observed?" Shit like that used to be all over Soviet sciences because Stalin tasked the PR branch thereof with establishing "we were there first" or at the very least "independently simultaneously" in every area. That's why I, e.g., know a double name (just like Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) for a lot of physics and chemistry laws, psychiatric syndromes, inventors of the radio and the what-not -- the real discoverer's name and the Russian "independently observed/invented/discovered" one which no one outside that particular doctrine has ever heard of. So uncooth. This is Tsuchishan over a museum in Balboa Park, San Diego, yesterday: Edited October 13 by Taomeow 3 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Taomeow Posted October 15 (edited) Halloween is still a couple of weeks away, but Halloween horrors have already begun. In Ohio, a police officer got swallowed whole by a giant pumpkin. Edited October 15 by Taomeow 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
zerostao Posted October 15 Strange things happen in Ohio, all the time. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
