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More alien fun from others

By Space and Aliens

Yep, the fun continues with another cartoon caption runner up winner from a prior competition. This one was Simon’s entry, a particular favourite of mine.

IMG_4201.JPGSo, you may have cottoned on to my cunning plan. This week I’ll be sharing some of the wonderful prior entries into my competitions to inspire those of you who haven’t entered the latest one yet.

So here’s your chance… Click here to enter the latest ‘name the alien’ competition.

 

How baby aliens are born

By Science, Space and Aliens

How baby aliens are bornWell, the white hole, hey?

In the wonderful words of Wiki

‘In general relativity, a white hole is a hypothetical region of space-time which cannot be entered from the outside, although matter and light can escape from it. In this sense, it is the reverse of a black hole, which can only be entered from the outside, from which nothing, including light, can escape.’

Put simply, where as the black hole sucks everything into it, the white hole spits it out.  When you put the two together, you have a wormhole with one end sucking, the end spitting – that’s what a scientist would consider to be perfect balance of energy in equals energy out.

Unlike our friend the black hole which we have observed in space, the white hole hasn’t and hence is only theoretical under the theory of general realtivity.

The idea of white holes were new to me. Am I the only ignorant one out here in cyber space?

Is grass really greener on the other side?

By Space and Aliens

Maritans are always greener on the other planets

We all know the metaphorical interpretation of this proverb, but it is also scientifically true!

James Pomerantz, author of the scientific article ‘The Grass is always Greener: An Ecological Analysis of an Old Aphorism (1983).  This scholar proves that ‘optical and perceptual laws alone will make the grass at a distance look greener to the human eye than the blades of grass perpendicular to the ground.’

Now that’s a really cool fact to keep up your sleeves!

The hungry ghost explained

By Pot Luck

… and that’s why he’s hungry

Why ghosts are hungry

…or so I thought, until I did more research…

Let me explain. I was surfing the net for inspiration for my next cartoon.  Sometimes I like to draw cartoons that play on words or phrases.  I found myself on an idiom site that listed popular sayings, of which ‘hungry ghost’ was one of them. I hadn’t heard of the saying before and the site didn’t offer an explanation, so I just assumed it referred to someone who is always hungry – just like a ghost would be because the food goes straight through them.

Well, I was wrong and should have realised that I was being a bit too literal with my interpretation.  After drawing the cartoon I hunted the web for a definition and it didn’t take me long to find out how wrong I was.  For those of you as unfamiliar with this one as I was, here’s what dictionary.com said

‘in Buddhism, a supernatural being filled with more desire than it can consume’

and provided this example

‘The hungry ghost is often depicted with large belly and tiny mouth, a metaphor for people futilely attempting to fulfil their illusory physical desires.’

Have you ever misinterpreted some of those funny english sayings before?

Share, we’ll both have a laugh together.