Calendars off by 20 years?
These pranksters are getting ready for 2021... not 2001
Where's the mysterious metal monolith today then? Oh look, it's atop a California mountain
This is getting out of hand. Mere days after the metal "monolith" found out in the boondocks of Utah vanished, a similar structure has popped up on a Californian mountaintop. Local papers reported the plinth was spotted atop Pine Mountain near the town of Atascadero in San Luis Obispo County. The rectangle was said to be made …
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Thursday 3rd December 2020 16:02 GMT Phones Sheridan
Re: "Where will the mysterious metal monolith appear next?"
I think this is more like the garden gnome going missing, then for the next few years you get post cards from it taken next to various landmarks all over the world, followed by the obligatory Daily Sport headline "Mysterious metal monolith found on moon!" in a few weeks.
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Thursday 3rd December 2020 17:11 GMT beep54
Re: "Where will the mysterious metal monolith appear next?"
Reminds me of a prank a friend played in college around 1972 or so. He arraigned for a series of postcards to be sent to one particular girl that all said, "Wait for me. I'm coming. Godot." He managed to have them sent from around the world with the postmarks being ever closer to home causing the girl to begin to panic. She obviously did not get the Godot part. He would have, of course, missed her. But this lasted an entire semester.
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Friday 4th December 2020 11:50 GMT J.G.Harston
Re: "Where will the mysterious metal monolith appear next?"
Years ago I heard Waiting... on the radio and in my head they were the Daily Express tramps.
That ages me. ;)
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Thursday 3rd December 2020 20:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: "Where will the mysterious metal monolith appear next?"
@beep54
He managed to have them sent from around the world with the postmarks being ever closer to home causing the girl to begin to panic."
You call that a prank? What would you call it if it happened to a daughter of yours? Assuming that your mummy let you out of her basement to let you fuck someone else.
Cheers… Ushy
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Sunday 6th December 2020 20:37 GMT jake
Re: "Where will the mysterious metal monolith appear next?"
That's an odd one. I never would have guessed the Frisians to be susceptible to the narcissistic vanity of band-wagon jumping.
On the other hand, I'll bet the perps are used to saying "Do you want fries with that?" in the local lingo ...
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Thursday 3rd December 2020 18:14 GMT Mark 85
Re: Not aluminium?
Article: "The rectangle was said to be made of stainless steel..."
No further comment.
The new ones are obviously bad copies that blew it. The original was a triangle and thought to be stainless steel. I tend to agree that these "copies" are just pranks. Maybe the first one was also? The one mystery not solved is "who took the first one?".
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Thursday 3rd December 2020 22:09 GMT Kernel
Re: Not aluminium?
"The one mystery not solved is "who took the first one?"."
One of the pleasures of living in a UTC+12 time zone - you often get to hear the news first.
From a New Zealand news site -
"Utah residents Andy Lewis and Sylvan Christensen posted a 23-second video showing the monolith, once embedded into the rock, being dismantled, loaded onto a wheelbarrow and carried away at night."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6c2EhNtSj4
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Thursday 3rd December 2020 12:31 GMT KittenHuffer
Technically ......
...... I don't think I've ever seen Aluminium. But I do see Aluminium Oxide all over the place.
This is because as soon as Aluminium is exposed to normal air Oxygen will bond to it producing a layer of Aluminium Oxide across the new surface. So unless you cut your Aluminium in an oxygen free environment all you ever see is 'pre-rusted' Aluminium.
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Thursday 3rd December 2020 14:42 GMT Loyal Commenter
Re: Technically ......
Having seen what was left of a fume hood after finely divided aluminium that was cut in an oxygen-free atmosphere subsequently came into contact with air, I can confidently assert that aluminium very definitely does react with air given half a chance.
I'm reliably informed that it will quite happily continue to burn underwater, once started.
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Thursday 3rd December 2020 20:23 GMT bombastic bob
Re: Technically ......
I'm reliably informed that it will quite happily continue to burn underwater, once started.
several metals will do that, by essentially burning hot enough to react with the water itself.
Pure Al metal instantly forms a protective oxide layer when exposed to air. This is why you need inert gas to weld it. You can't solder to it either. Titanium is similar. A lot of metals are actually like this.
Everyone remembers Jr. High science teachers lighting magnesium and putting sodium into water, right?
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Friday 4th December 2020 10:09 GMT PhilipN
Re: Technically ......
"continue to burn"
Long discussion here about aluminium warships burning (or not) some years ago during the tenure of a site editor with military characteristics and stimulated by events during the Falklands War. Details (including the final conclusion, if there was one) escape me since I am not into violence.
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Friday 4th December 2020 04:39 GMT swm
Re: Technically ......
In high school I used to "burn" holes in aluminum pie plates with mercury. The mercury acts as a catalyst and allows the oxygen in the air to get to the aluminum under the oxide and oxidise it. The result is towers of aluminun oxide and, eventually, creates holes in the pie plate.
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Friday 4th December 2020 15:17 GMT Loyal Commenter
Re: Technically ......
Technically ......
...... I don't think I've ever seen Aluminium. But I do see Aluminium Oxide all over the place.
Technically, you have seen the aluminium (note for our crosspondian cousins, not aloominum), because the couple-of-atoms-thick layer of alumina on the surface is thin enough to allow the vast majority of photons to pass straight through it. If pure enough, it can grow pretty transparent crystals as well, more commonly known as sapphires and rubies (depending on the colour, which depends on the impurities).
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Thursday 3rd December 2020 16:22 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Re: Mondelez Advert
Thermite Welding is used for Continuous Welded Rails...
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=thermite+welding+rails
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Thursday 3rd December 2020 16:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Mondelez Advert
You do have to be careful with other metals in close proximity though, otherwise a large battery results with consequent electrolytic action
Yes, hence its use as a sacrificial anode on big steel ships and oil rigs.
And if you want to see how well it reacts with oxygen, look at the exhaust of a space shuttle solid rocket booster. It gets a bit toasty...
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Thursday 3rd December 2020 16:30 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Re: Steel yourself, not all are made from metal either…
A local brewery has dedicated “a tangy, natural red beer” to the erection...
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Thursday 3rd December 2020 18:01 GMT Dave559
Black Speech
If you were a, umm, person(?), orc, wraith or other fell being from Mordor, I would imagine that when it comes to speech (or anything else) black would surely be regarded as a very positive adjective (or do I mean negative)? The blacker and darker the better?
It's all a question of your perspective.
(Although there probably could be, and probably have been, many PhD theses written on the issue of how the forces of evil tend to be portrayed as (in some sense) "black", and to some extent that's a fair point, although obviously it's not a comparison with ethnic origin as such.)
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Thursday 3rd December 2020 18:02 GMT Irony Deficient
an ineffable and extraterrestrial script
Black Speech from Mordor?
If I recall correctly, more than one Middle Earth language was written using Tengwar.
Closer to effability and terrestriality, the Mkhedruli letters of modern Georgian and several scripts for languages in India and southeastern Asia are also quite curly.
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Thursday 3rd December 2020 15:37 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: Destroy them!!!
I thought it was the source of the Illuminati mind control that is going to be propagated via the 5G network.
I think people are confusing cause & effect. First propagate a virii. Then mutate via propagated radio waves, creating a memetic virii. Then use those radio waves to program the infected. Then use senior infected carriers to implement policies beneficial to the memetic virus. Then, as the saying goes, "The virus makes work for idle hands".
This is all obvious when you think about it. Programming infected people to make crop circles was just a beta test. The crop circles can be seen from space, but have a low information content, and programming subjects to create QRC (QR Crop) codes was complex and unreliable. But this alpha test proved that spreading via communications was possible, and indeed desireable.
So enter COVID, or Communications-Optimised Viral Information Distribution. An elegant method of combining ancient and modern, utilising quatenary code along side binary to make programming 'go viral'. Richard Dawkins discovered this, but was then persuaded to keep quiet about meme infection, but as always, once a meme is in the wild, it's hard to supress completely. But you can see plenty of evidence of the infected trying to supress this via 'social media' labelling truths as 'fake news'.
But again the purpose is obvious, as the results are showing. As the virus spreads, so do the 'monoliths'. As more are discovered, so will their networking function, and simply 'connecting the dots' will show they're placed at 'natural' convergence points around the globe. This fact is also 'checked' by dismissing the idea of ley lines, which is also evidence of the efforts being directed at supressing the truth.
But the introduction of 5G will increase the data available to the memetic virii, and thus hosts. This will both accelerate the process of 'monoliths'. These are obviously antenna, and with millions of 4W hosts transferring power via the ley lines to the antenna, will be powerful enough to beam signals into deep space, summoning our new overlords.
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Thursday 3rd December 2020 12:04 GMT Dave 126
Hmm, rivets. Hand riveter fits in a rucksack, rivets can be swiftly drilled out within one battery charge of a portable 18v drill for dismantling. The stainless steel sides could be rolled up for transport, possibly within a large rucksack, and then riveted to internal frame. Internal frame simple to assemble and erect / dismantle and stow away.
The thickness of stainless to choose would depend on how flat you can rivet thin stuff against the frame, versus how tightly you want to roll up the sheets (and carry weight).
Possibly whole shebang could be carried by one person. Erection is sort of job that would be easier with two people, but doable by one person. Visiting remote spots is safer if done by more than one person (should, eg, an ankle be broken in area of no cell phone coverage).
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Thursday 3rd December 2020 12:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
The Covid effect
The shoddy installation of this monolith is proof that the Aliens are also susceptible to Covid 9. They had to social distance while digging it in, so with only one working at a time they were unable to make a proper job of it.
In fact, I don't think the virus arose in animals at all. It is extra-terrestrial in origin and somebody picked it up during an alien encounter.
[Anon as I don't want to be abducted to Area 51 during the Covid crisis]
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Thursday 3rd December 2020 14:10 GMT Mike 137
"Where will the mysterious metal monolith appear next?"
Crop circles all over again?
I guess some people don't have anything important to do but still want to get public attention. And no, you don't need to be identified to be considered "important" these days - it's commonly become an introverted thing of smirking to oneself in isolation about how clever one's been.
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Thursday 3rd December 2020 17:45 GMT Howard Sway
One has appeared in my back garden too!
Yes, a large metal rectangle, or monolith as I call it, has mysteriously appeared next to my shed, where I keep a small amount of metal plate. It is available to be viewed by all interested monolith enthusiasts at a price of only £75 per person. Photographs £50 each.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
