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Just before 9.30am on Sunday 11 November, a series of unusual seismic pulses rippled around the world almost undetected.
The waves rang for over 20 minutes, emanating about 15 miles off the shores of Mayotte - a tiny island in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and Africa.
From here, they reverberated across Africa, setting off geological sensors in Zambia, Kenya, and Ethiopia.
They crossed the Atlantic, and were picked up in Chile, New Zealand, Canada, and even Hawaii nearly 11,000 miles away, the National Geographic reports.
Despite their huge range, the waves were apparently not felt by anybody. However, one person monitoring the US Geological Survey's live stream of seismogram displays did notice the unusual waveform and posted it to Twitter, sparking the interest of other geologists and earthquake enthusiasts.
[...] The bizarre waveform is what scientists call "monochromatic". Earthquakes normally produce waves of so many different frequencies, the wave readings appear more jumbled.
But the mystery waveform from Mayotte was a crisp zigzag, which repeated after steady 17-second intervals.
"They're too nice. They're too perfect to be nature," joked the University of Glasgow's Helen Robinson, who is study[ing] for a PhD in applied volcanology.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @08:12AM (5 children)
what misadventures? as far as I know he cheated on his wife constantly, and always got away with it. otherwise he had fun on mount olympus, eating, drinking and throwing lightning at people.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 05 2018, @01:20PM (4 children)
Then Hera, his wife set up a spy network to find the other women/men, and cursed them (usually involving some sort of transformation into a vile monster) or sent monsters after the resulting progeny, often resulting in considerable harm to the humans of the area. I gather she couldn't do anything too overt, but it's like some adultery version of the Cold War with all sorts of nasty shenanigans going on merely because Zeus kept going after the women.
Now, imagine this religion where we have the head boss and a bunch of other gods with different motives and personalities, most who would be considered seriously mentally ill if they were human today, doing this crap all the time and we're supposed to worship them? While the Greek gods were relatively civilized, one couldn't say the same of gods who demanded considerable sacrifices, particularly the Central American ones. Now, that's a bad idea that thankfully never survived to modern times.
My view is that this whole mess from start to finish was an attempt to consolidate a huge number of tribal religious beliefs into a more uniform system. Every tribe probably had one or more gods that they worshiped. When larger organized efforts happened, they would have to deal with all those tribal gods. Everyone's god had to fit somewhere or people wouldn't be happy. Thus, we have polytheism, religion by committee.
Monotheism, including the Abrahamic religions was the natural next step. Instead of having a committee of gods that you had to pray to, now you just had one go-to god for everything.
My point behind this is that the Abrahamic religions are the result of a lot of evolution of religion from stuff that was really unwieldy. So saying that they're the worst thing ever ignores that there was worse, it just hasn't survived to modern times.
As to the flat Earther "winter sunlight" dude, he would have found some other way. That's brain chemistry not religion.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday December 05 2018, @02:47PM (3 children)
...so you don't think nymphomania is less of a problem than the kind of ego that goes "kiss my ass or I'll barbecue yours alive for eternity" then? Right. Interesting. Not entirely surprising, just disappointing.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 05 2018, @04:11PM (2 children)
You mean like Tartarus? Zeus threw some uncles in there. They have yet to come back out.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday December 05 2018, @04:16PM (1 child)
Doesn't the Greek mythological cycle have something akin to Ragnarok in it, prophesying the end of the Olympians and their system?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 05 2018, @04:47PM
According to that myth, Zeus then swallowed Metis. Athena was born anyway, though from the forehead of Zeus (or perhaps born twice, since she was born first from Metis, who apparently was just hanging out inside Zeus, before being released the second time). No word on whether there was a second baby on the way, but it does seem that the prophecy was thwarted.