DAVID ADAMS writes about the odder side of life…
• It’s formally known as ‘(486958) 2014 MU69’ but NASA is turning to the public for help in giving this icy world at the edge of our solar system a better sounding nickname. The spacecraft New Horizons, which swept past Pluto some two years ago, is now heading for this object, located some 6.5 billion kilometres away from Earth, and is set to pass by on 1st January, 2019. NASA says it would like to “use a more memorable nickname when we talk about our target body” so it’s asking for public suggestions (early observations suggest the new world may actually be two objects either stuck together or orbiting each other in which case two nicknames may be needed!). Suggestions must be received by 1st December this year (and please – need we say it? – no ‘Icy McIceface’!) To suggest your name, head to http://www.frontierworlds.org.
• New records for spinning the world’s largest hula hoop, travelling 20 metres in a contortion roll in the fastest recorded time, and creating the world’s largest vegan cake were all celebrated earlier this month as part of Guinness World Records Day. Other new records to mark the day were set by the UK’s Richard Browning who took the title for the ‘Fastest speed in a body controlled jet engine powered suit’, staff at Mercedes-Benz Canada who set new record using a new electric vehicle to create the ‘Most balloons suspended by static electricity’, and 12-year-old Maddie Rae who created more than six tons of slime to take the title of making the world’s largest slime at a convention in New York. Oh, and for the record, the first three records we mentioned at the start? The first involved a 5.14 metre hoop spun by Japanese ‘Hoop Man’ Yuya Yamada while the second was set by China’s Liu Teng in just 15.54 seconds and the third involved a cake weighing 462.4 kilograms and was the work of Swedish YouTube star Therese Lindgren and friends.
• A baby sleeping in the window display of a New York auction house has apparently led to passersby alerting staff that a baby has been accidentally left in the window display. Except that in this case the sleeping baby is actually a sculpture, Baby in a Carriage, 1983, made by US “hyper-realist” artist Duane Hanson. Expected to sell for as much as $US120,000 at the end of the month, the baby, made of polyvinyl, wears a shirt bearing the Bible verse “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast the first stone,” from the Gospel of John, chapter eight.
