DAVID ADAMS writes about the odder side of life…
Artist’s concept of the Psyche spacecraft, which will conduct a direct exploration of an asteroid thought to be a stripped planetary core. PICTURE: SSL/ASU/P. Rubin/NASA/JPL-Caltech
• Roman Catholic church officials and civic authorities in the Austrian town of Saalfelden have joined in a search for a hermit to live in a 350-year-old hermitage built into cliffs near Salzburg. As well as being good with living alone, applicants should reportedly have a Christian outlook and be ready to greet visiting pilgrims and locals who come to pray and talk (and it’s also worth noting that the position is unpaid and the hermitage, which has no running water and is unheated, is only habitable between April and November). Deadline for application is 15th March. The hermitage has apparently been vacant since last autumn when a Viennese pastor vacated the post after a year. Prior to him, the occupant, for 12 years, was a Benedictine monk. Local priest Alois Moser and Saafelden’s mayor Erich Rohrmoser will choose the winning candidate.
• NASA is planning to send an unmanned spacecraft to an asteroid which is believed to be entirely made of metals – such as iron, nickel, gold and copper – and consequently estimated to be worth as much as $US10,000 quadrillion – $10,000,000,000,000,000,000, a figure which is worth more than the entire wealth of the world (estimated at $US73.7 trillion). The Psyche mission is reportedly expected to launch in 2023 and will arrive at the asteroid, which orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter, seven years later and spend 20 months collecting data. While there are no plans to tow the asteroid back to Earth, experts say that given the immense value of the metals, if that did happen, the global economy would collapse. PICTURE
• It’s rare enough for two members of the one family to share a birthday but what about three?;NBC in New York reports that not only were husband and wife Luke and Hillary Gardner born in the same day in December – the 18th, exactly six hours apart – but so too was their son Cade. Staticians say the odds of that happening are about one in 133,000.
