Kwikfit lands on the Moon

Hey Buzz! What do you mean the whole exhaust is needing replaced. I only brought it in for a car wash!

Buzz, can you give us a lift back to Earth? and don't say 'The sky's the limit', cause that is the worst slogan I've ever heard! It doesn't work here Buzz, believe me, I'm an astronaut.

Beware the GSM crops

An old lady friend of mine and I were talking the other day and she, a great source of distorted facts and half-heard stories was voicing her concerns about 'GSM' crops and the possible 'threat of them spreading to mutate with the natives.'

I have to say that up to this point I was not concerned about the genetically modified (GM) crops currently being developed but I did see the dangers arising if the crops were able to communicate with each other over the GSM cell network. That's a much more serious issue and one that needs investigated.

It does bring to mind a 'War of the Wolds' scenario with mindless faceless cereal killers roaming the streets of rural 'wherever' looking for natives to mutate with. I could understand her fears but re-assured her that she would be safe by the seashore, at least, because plants don't like salt, with a few hardy exceptions. That's why you cannot put salt on cornflakes for fear of unbalancing nature and making your partner gag or laugh hysterically. The exception to this rule is, oats and porridge, which benefits from a cheeky wee pinch now and then, just like the folks that eat it.

So beware of the GSM crops. It would also explain why you can never get a phone signal when out in the country. I am not sure if, when in a 'crop circle' you can share the same telecom account or have to have individual ones. Your local Telecoms shop will be able to advise you here and if he is the one selling the crops all these accounts, it would also explain why he's making so much freakin' money. So give his Ferrari a good dunt when you pass it.

Be assured the one way to stop the onslaught of the GSM crops is to put them onto a roaming tariff and the whole 'taking over the planet, mutating' thing will just become unaffordable and go away.

My friend has now taken to wearing a hat made of aluminium foil when out walking in the country, just in case. It goes quite well with the aluminium bicycle clips she wears to stop the GSM bees from flying up her trouser legs. Personally I like the gentle humming ringtones of the bee's, the engaged tone of the trees and the speed dial sound of the rabbits. Communing with nature, put it on your list of family and friends this weekend.

Super Size my Milk Way

Milky way 'larger than imagined'

A recent disclosure indicates that the Milky Way is considerably larger (contains more heavenly bodies), bulkier (more mass) and spinning faster (its all relative) than astronomers thought.

For decades, astronomers and stargazers thought that the Milky Way, was a weakling runt compared to the larger Andromeda, but not anymore.

Scientists mapped the Milky Way in a more detailed, three-dimensional way and found that it is 15% greater breadth. More important, it is significantly more dense, with 50% additional mass, which is similar to the weight but includes a size factor.

The new findings were presented at the American Astronomical Society's convention in Long Beach, California. Mark Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said it was the cosmic equivalent of him suddenly increasing his bulk from his 5ft 5in, 10 stone frame, to 6ft 3in and 15 stone.

"Previously we thought Andromeda was dominant over the Milky Way, and that we were the little sibling of Andromeda," Mr Reid said. "But now it's more like we're sibling twins."

The fact that the Milky Way and Andromeda are of similar mass means that they share a similar attraction to each other, not necessarily good news. A more massive and attractive Milky Way means that it could be heading for a more violent collision with the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy, sooner than predicted. This event is still likely to be billions of years from now.

Mr Reid and his colleagues used a large system of 10 radio telescope antennas to measure the brightest newborn stars in the galaxy at different times in Earth's orbit around the sun. They made a map of those stars, not just in the locations where they were first seen, but in the third dimension of time - something Mr Reid said has not been done before.

Using this approach, Mr Reid was able to determine the speed at which the spiral-shaped Milky Way is spinning around its centre. That speed - about 568,000mph - is faster than the 492,000mph that scientists had been using for decades.

So now you know why you were feeling a bit dizzy after the New Year Celebrations