It’s April Fool’s Day. Some of the items in the news sound like they were written with that in mind. “Exploding head syndrome” – is that a real thing? Yes, it is. Although it’s only a sensation in the head, not an actual brain-splattering explosion. (I’m sure some of you are disappointed.)
How about a “combination roadside billboard and hydroponic lettuce farm”? Is it real? Yes, it is. This “air orchard” is in Peru (video) and it produces (according to one news report) thousands of heads of organically grown lettuce every week. Plus, 96 liters of clean drinking water per day.
How about this headline: “Man Looks for Missing Cat, Finds a Buried UFO”? Really? A UFO? This has to be an April Fool’s story, right? Actually it’s not, but the headline also isn’t true. Reading the story, we discover the man didn’t find a UFO, he found a round hole in the ground. And at the bottom of the hole there was something metallic. So it has to be a UFO, right? Because that’s the most likely thing anyone would ever think could be at the bottom of a hole in ground. But it turns out the hole had been there for decades, ever since a company looking for oil broke off a large drill bit in the hole and abandoned it. (The missing cat was found hiding in a cupboard.)
Then there was this: on the International Space Station, scientists are training ants to sort tiny screws in space. Is is true? Of course not. Although that did happen on the The Simpsons.
It’s too bad that last one isn’t real. When our Mars rover breaks down, it would be nice to be able to shoot a box of ants with spare parts to Mars to fix the thing. Although the Martian air is very, very thin, and getting ants to wear itty-bitty space suits would probably be a major hassle.
It would probably be an even bigger hassle than it was getting those cows we have on Mars to wear their suits.
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