Scientists at NASA want to create a super-cold freezing chamber for normal reasons that have nothing to do with the rumored escapees from Arkham Asylum last night.
“Thompson says that he and his team of NASA scientists intend to lower temperatures in the lab to 100-pico-Kelvin, or just “one ten billionth of a degreeabove absolute zero,” the temperature at which it is theorized, that thermal activity of all atoms ceases. The researchers theorize that when objects are exposed to the extreme cold temperatures in the Cold Atom Lab, new forms of matter will be created as the notion of solids, liquids and gases will no longer apply.
“For normal reasons,” Thompson continued, smiling fixedly. “For — for normal reasons. Normal, safe, very normal reasons.” He clenched his right hand into a fist, then trembled violently. “Ice is good and ice is safe.”
“Mysterious underwater eelgrass rings” are simply the result of ordinary, everyday poison. Nothing to worry about here, just poisoned circles lurking below the waves.
The starfish (thank God) are finally dying off: “Then they closely watch the progress of the disease. First, the stars twist their arms into knots, and sometimes lesions form on their skin. One of them was very sick, and the other two individuals started ripping themselves apart. The arms just crawl away from the particular body…The arms crawl in opposite directions, until they tear away from the body and their insides spill out. And unlike most starfish, the arms don’t regenerate. Stars that came in with symptoms died within 24 hours…But we still don’t know how they’re catching the illness or where it comes from.”
They know. They know, and they’re testing the limits of what they know, and they think our intelligence so mean they mock us by telling us what they are doing as they do it. They know where the illness comes from, and they know where it will go next.
