Strange News – Page 19 – Chester Press

Gossiping Stars

The Hollywood variety are known to be chatty, and it turns out that the interstellar variety are as well.

Stars are ‘talking’ to each other, according to research performed by leading Astronomer Franz Keg at Munich ASL Observatory.

“It has taken over a decade, for the delay of communication is still governed by the speed of light. We have recorded a conversation between our star and one of the nearest, Barnard’s Star,” he says, “It is still up for analysis whether there is a proper grammar and structure.”

The report says that the ‘hot topic’ is a supernova that happened 150 years ago – yesterday in solar terms. Flares, sun spots, and strong magnetic fields send out an enormously complex signal that is being received, in a decade or so, by other stars.

“While we have only discovered three parts of a conversation, we expect there to be more as the years go on and our research continues. Alpha Centauri was has been too complicated, as the triple system is too noisy, much like a gaggle of geese,” he says, “As the Earth travels through the solar wind, it is like sitting on the telephone wire, listening in to the gossip.”

Happy Birthday, Jumbo

Elephants now join the ranks of humans and sea-otters for a rare classification – they remember birthdays. “There’s a lot to the saying that an elephant never forgets, so it’s only natural that these wonderful creatures show such an amazing ability,” says biologist Ramsay Helifax, “The evidence is pretty clear.”

Ramsay and his team monitored a herd of elephants in Africa for over five years, using satellite trackers to detail their movements. One year after the birth of every elephant in the herd, to the exact hour, each elephant raises their trunk in salute.

“The ‘birthday elephant’ walks in circles while the other elephants raise their trunks and trumpet what we can only imagine is the pachyderm equivalent of ‘happy birthday’,” Ramsay says, “The ceremony is over in five minutes, after which they get down to some serious eating.”

Every elephant in the herd received the treatment, Ramsay noted, except for one, “Billy, a young bull, was the only one who missed out.” When pressed for his opinion as to why, Ramsay jokes, “It’s probably because he’s the <expletive> of the herd.”

Ramsay hopes to repeat his studies in India and inspire other researchers to follow in his footsteps.