I'm Not Dead, Just Lazy. Also, Colossal Squid, and Overzealous Capitalization of Titles

Well, well, well. It would appear that public humiliation is a significant motivator! Okay. I will take time out of my "busy" day of reading the same blogs, over and over and over again, until it is time to go home, to write you people a post. And you will like it.

Let's see. Where's our Huge Awesome Things Action Item Tracking Sheet? Can I even remember my Google Docs login? Hmm. Okay, I'm in. What do we have here? Cluster ballooning... nope, biggest RC plane... I'll pass, Hugest Boar Testicles? Jesus, Nathan, what the hell kind of sick action items are these? You can take care of the porcine gonads, thanks. Oh, here we go. I can do this. Let's talk about cephalopods, my most favorite class of mollusca!

As this blog is specifically about Huge and Awesome things, I'll have to pass on the discussion of the emminently adorable cuttlefish (look! he just wants a hug)


And skip straight to COLOSSAL SQUID.

Colossal Squid are the largest known invertabrate. They can grow to 46 feet in length and can weigh half a ton; large enough to take out sperm whales, and even your mom. Here's one of those handy charts I like so much (sorry it is in Socialist Metric and doesn't feature Your Mom):


In New Zealand, some fishermen managed to snag a colossal squid and drag its carcass home for SCIENCE. These men are heroes.


So, what did science find out about the largest squid ever captured? Oh, you know, nothing special.

JUST HUNDREDS OF SUCKERS ON EACH TENTACLE EQUIPPED WITH TOOTH-LIKE HOOKS. THAT SWIVEL, FOR OPTIMAL ATTACHMENT, TO YOUR FACE.

WHAT THE FUCK NATURE.

Also, this thing:


Scientists call this the squid's "beak" which might evoke images of cute sparrows or toucans or other such harmless feathered friends. In this case, "beak" refers to a part of the squid's body that is, you know, dedicated to rending flesh from bone. I mean, no biggie, right? Definitely not a problem when it's stripping the meat off your own thorax.

So, pretty much everything about the Colossal Squid is fundamentally huge, and horrifying. Therefore perfectly suitable to future warfare! When the revolution comes and you're up against the wall, I'll be wearing a Colossal Squid suit, with swivel-hook equipped tentacles and a beak the size of your face. Who's IN CHARGE NOW, BITCHES?

...

Oh hey, this whole post-writing thing is actually easier than I remember it being... hmm, guess I could do this more often, yes?

The only thing that will save us is the Matrix of Leadership

(Editor's Note: Guest Blogger! "SHUT UP CECI!")







Sometimes I get nauseous when I think about anything bigger than a house. My biggest fears consist of, but are not limited to: the Marianas Trench, Jupiter, and Colossal Squid, simply because their sheer size is so overwhelming I think these things will eat me.

So, along the line of being eaten by massive(ly awesome) things, I must be the bearer of bad news. The hugest, most awesome thing in existence might not be located in our universe. Good for my piece of mind, bad for anyone who gets off on potentially being swallowed alive by things like the Marianas Trench, Jupiter, and Colossal Squid (ew).

To understand what just went down at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, we must start at the beginning.

OF TIME.

Scientists "know" the age of our universe to be 13.7 billion years old, so the farthest light could ever get from us is 13.7 billion light years away. This is called the "observable universe." We don't really know how big our universe is, we just can't see further than the age of it. To this cosmic big bang soup we add a little theory called inflation. Among many things, it includes the idea of a BUBBLEVERSE, or multiverse. For the sake of making this whole thing less scary, I'll stick with bubbleverse. This theory posits that there are multiple universes beyond the horizon of our own. After the Big Bang, there were these huge fluctuations in energy that caused rapid expansions in space-time (whatever the fuck that means), creating "bubble universes." This theory is totally LEGIT--Brian Greene says so.

To make a long story short, there are a fuckton of galaxy clusters being sucked out of our observable universe. Meaning, OUT OF OUR BUBBLE. According to space.com:

Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can't be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon "dark flow."

This movement is not the same movement causing our universe to expand--and its speed doesn't decrease over time. WTF. Plus, it's being sucked out to a specific spot--between the constellations of Centaurus and Vela (or that pink spot of death in the map of the cosmic microwave background above). And nothing in our universe has the gravitational strength to cause it. So whatever is causing the flow must be located outside the observable universe. Basically, there is a river of star stuff being STOLEN FROM US. By what, you ask? Again, space.com:

It could include giant, massive structures much larger than anything in our own observable universe. These structures are what researchers suspect are tugging on the galaxy clusters, causing the dark flow.

GIANT!

MASSIVE!

STRUCTURES!

Eating OUR galaxies!

My friends, your childhood nightmares have returned. Unicron is REAL.