Space Concertinas :-)

[spindizzy]

From a recent Astronomy site:

 

Cassini Images Bizarre Hexagon on Saturn

 

Pasadena, Calif. -- An odd, six-sided, honeycomb-shaped feature circling the entire north pole of Saturn has captured the interest of scientists with NASA's Cassini mission.

 

See http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/

 

Chris

[JimLucas]

Pasadena, Calif. -- An odd, six-sided, honeycomb-shaped feature circling the entire north pole of Saturn has captured the interest of scientists with NASA's Cassini mission.

 

See http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/

Hmm. The dark "hole" in the center makes it look like a reed pan.

 

Do you think they use beeswax to mount the reeds?

[Chris Timson]

At the point where Albertiddles and Ufology meet ...

 

I have been awaiting a development like this since at least the mid 90s. The Albertiddle Research page maintained by Wendy Morrison has disappeared (or been forced off?) the Net, so I may have to remind you that Albertiddles were huge concertina-shaped structures developed by Charles Wheatstone and others in the 19th century and researched by a number of us on the Accordion mailing list (precursor to the Squeezbox newsgroup) back in about 1997. A number of these epic building/instruments were built, and their remnants identified by researchers (including the Hayden Planetarium in New York, the Pentagon and, of course, their venerable progenitor, the Royal Albert Hall in London), but we never really established why they were built.

 

I had long suspected that they might be Victorion space ships. It all added up, their size and their great bellows structures, so useful for both propulsion and life support, but I never found conclusive evidence. Now here it is: one Albertiddle at least was launched and landed on the north pole of Saturn, where it remains to this day. One can only speculate on that epic journey and the hardships and privations involved, and the tragedy that led to the crew being permanently stranded so far from Earth. Perhaps their descendants are still alive down there in the primordial soup of Saturn. A rescue mission should be launched as soon as possible! Who knows what ancient secrets of the Victorian concertina trade might be mouldering away there. Save the Saturn Squeezers!

 

Chris

[Howard Mitchell]

Chris,

 

Our discussions about Albertiddles had all but faded from my memory.

 

But....

 

I've recently moved to a new office in Derby and out of my window I can see what must have been the launch site. Roundhouse. Scroll down to the last photo on the right. It is, at present, undergoing restoration to be part of a new development for Derby College. I hope they understand what they're messing with.

 

 

Howard

[Theodore Kloba]

Our discussions about Albertiddles had all but faded from my memory.

But not from Google... A few relics of the discussion that were passed on to usenet through the gateway can be found by searching Google Groups.

[stephen masty]

Not to discourage all this levity, but an unexplored scientific possibility is that we are watching the spontaneous, natural generation of a concertina, and a concertina of considerable size.

 

In the early 1990s, scientists looking at soot discovered a third form of carbon, added to diamonds (with tetrahedral atomic formations) and graphite (resembling chicken wire) named fullerenes or buckeyballs after buckminster fuller's geodesic domes, which they resemble.

 

It may be that there is a fourth naturally occurring form of carbon resulting in concertinas. of course since saturn is far away, we cannot immediately determine the type of carbon prone to the formation of concertinas, but from the colouration of the Cassini-Huygens photographs, we may at least temporarily infer that the formation (and hence Saturn as a whole) may be comprised of mahagony. Scientists at the Tedrow Institute of Free Reed Cosmology, in Atlanta, Georgia, are watching closely to see if the newly-discovered geologic formation erupts in parallel rows of cyllindrical nodes of naturally-occurring delrin, one of the rarer elements. Meanwhile Professor Wakker, director of the Radio-Astromusicological Survey in Holland, points out that in 1936, German scientists Gerhardt von Chemnitzer and J. graf von Suttner won their Nobel prize in physics for demonstrating that radio wave emissions from the ringed planet corresponded to the keys of C and G (D/G in Ireland). So we may expect further discoveries on that front.

 

Saturn weighs 95.162 times that of the planet Earth, so a spontaneously occurring geological concertina comprising even a fraction of that planet's mass would represent one of the heaviest concertinas ever observed, exponentially heavier than even the 1892 experimental 211-button, lead-lined Lachenal anglo, unseen since between the wars and now, reportedly, in a private collection in Japan.

 

So the twin spheres of free reed musicology and astrophysics remain on tenterhooks. Of course there remains the equal possibility that the photograph does not depict the spontaneous generation of a concertina at all, and rather shows us the final stages of an (admittedly large) concertina being absorbed into the body of Saturn, which naturally raises questions of where it came from, and how it got there without passing observed either through the solar system in general or the Barleycorn stockroom in particular.

[Leo]

Strong possibility it's related to the prehistoric one found in Ireland a few years ago. Great research:

http://www.concertina.net/forums/index.php...amp;#entry22009

 

Chances are somebody here well versed in the "earth sciences" will be able to add to the research?

 

On second thought; maybe it's just the big nut holding the solar system together. If removed all the planets fly off into space. But then again it's just like the news putting out leaks a few days before the "Official AF Due Date".

 

Thanks

Leo

Edited March 29, 2007 by Leo