h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

...a near miss, hopefully, rather than a kiss. haha. What? The love story. Meteorites - A Love Story.

I've seen that meteor crater in Arizona, it's awesome, kinda hot and rocky and vast and cratery, but I prefer to be looking at these pictures with writing on them, at home with my laptop. . Much better.

Meteorite ... Meteora! . I was once in an extraordinary place in Greece called Meteora. There are monasteries, and high rock towers. Hermits live in caves in the rock towers. I've often thought about that place.

Point is .... point is ....

(goes off to check something ....)

yes!

Meteora, (can't type Greek script), Greek word meaning 'middle of the sky', 'suspended in the air' or 'in the heavens above' etymologically related to 'Meteorite'

That's amazing. Quite amazing. A bit amazing?

I've never been to Meteora, but I've seen the pictures of people being raised in baskets. I think it was there.

On the other hand, we've driven through Paradeisos, a village in Thraki, and past Megalopolis, a tiny place in the Peloponisos. Greek place names are fun.

I love that, Paradeisos.

Ah Greek.

Meteoric. That's a good word. As pertaining to a meteor, but also means rapid. As pertaining? My language is quite odd tonight.

I was just checking words that start with meteor and I ended up on a scrabble wordfinder site. . I'm not very good at scrabble. I knew someone who was a scrabble genius. She got so intense, it was scary, I always wanted to run away and eat all the letters like they were pills.

I just like to make the words. I don't like worrying about the score.

That's a good approach. My scrabble genius friend was really into the score. . I kinda wanted to trade souls with her but not really, , if I could get high scores I think I'd be score obsessed. Next life..

Perhaps I could take you on at scrabble, although you probably know how to play scrabble in German, Yiddish and quite a lot of other languages with different scripts. hmm. Do you? That's a really interesting thought. Could I be you please? just for one day?

We could be heroes just for one day. following the Bowie theme here. .

(heads out to ingest scrabble letters washed down with cold water)

Who invented scrabble?

sorry, I've strayed from meteorites. .

I think Scrabble was invented by that game company that invented all the games back in the day. Parker Brothers, or some such.

I've played in German, but that's all.

hah!

I've just been checking Parker Brothers. Fascinating! I never heard of Parker Brothers. This is good knowledge. And Parker Bros are also responsible for Monopoly and Cleudo and Trivial Pursuit, amongst others.

You know what? .... dot dot dot .... I've never played Monopoly.

Isn't that interesting. Am I alone?

Have I strayed from the subject of meteorites yet again? yes!

I watched a fascinating documentary the other night about Mr Bassett Lowke, the inventor of the model railway, and Mr Frank Hornby who invented the toy model railway, and he also invented Meccano. Which is very interesting. And nothing whatsoever to do with meteorites.

Hey CC, here is a meteorite story connected with the moon.

http://news.yahoo.com/revealed-awesome-explanation-moon-extra-gravity-190033742.html


It seem that meteors impacting there create super gravity conditions in their craters because of particles called mascons. That makes landing on the moon tricker than usual and if they hadn't found out about them before Apollo landings the astronauts would have died.

Hah! splendid! A meteorite story! Keep me off the Scrabble.

Interesting article. There's things out there that I don't know. . Like, everything.

I like the bit where it says the moon is like a lemon meringue pie. Good analogy, helps me to understand, even though it makes me hungry.

What I want to know is ....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22736709

So this asteroid is orbited by its own moon ... If it went off course and say...crashed into Earth... what would happen to its moon? I didn't know that asteroids were orbited by their own moons. Sometimes. Now I need to know how orbits work.

So even asteroids get groupies.

haha yes. Just such a pain of a rockstar asteroid, expects everyone and everything to be in its orbit. . Soooo attention seeking. That moon had a life before she started circling around it.

At least it didn't hit us and cause mass extinction.

Yes, that would be waaaaay over the top attention seeking, except there'd be nobody left to give it attention. . If I was that moon I'd get out now, while I yet can.

Hey rock-star asteroid, you're not a star. You're just a rock, and you don't really rock, I'm not buying your albums any more... I'd say.

This is a good story. . You started it by saying about groupies. . At this rate my advanced cosmology will attract the attention of the science journals.

Be sure to cite me as a reference.