Tireless Volunteers And Navy in Sri Lanka Just Saved 120 Whales From Stranding

 Sri Lanka's navy and volunteers rescued 120 pilot whales stranded within the country's biggest mass beaching, but a minimum of two injured animals was found dead, officials said.

Sailors from the navy and therefore the coastguard together with local volunteers pushed back a minimum of 120 whales by dawn Tuesday after a gruelling overnight rescue, navy spokesman Indika de Silva said.

The school of short-finned pilot whales washed ashore at Panadura, 25 kilometres (15 miles) south of Colombo, since Monday afternoon within the biggest-ever mass stranding of whales on the island.

"We used our small inshore patrol craft to drag the whales one by one into deeper waters," de Silva told AFP.

"Sadly, two whales have died of the injuries sustained once they beached."

Local authorities were braced for mass deaths as seen in Tasmania in September when about 470 pilot whales were stranded and only about 110 of them may well be saved after days of rescue efforts.

Sri Lanka's Marine Environment Protection Authority (MEPA) confirmed that Panadura saw the biggest single pod of whales stranded within the South country.

"It is extremely unusual for such an oversized number to succeed in our shores," MEPA chief Dharshani Lahandapura told AFP, adding that the explanation for the stranding wasn't known.

"We think this is often almost like the mass stranding in Tasmania in September."

Pilot whales - which may develop to 6 metres (20 feet) long and weigh a tonne - are highly social.

The causes of mass strandings remain unknown despite scientists studying the phenomenon for many years.

An Asteroid Trailing After Mars Could Actually Be The Stolen Twin of Our Moon

 A distant asteroid trailing within the gravitational wake of Mars has been observed in greater detail than ever before, and therefore the close-up reveals a surprising resemblance – one that raises some interesting questions about the object's ancient origins.

The asteroid in question, called (101429) 1998 VF31, is a component of a bunch of trojan asteroids sharing the orbit of Mars.

Trojans are celestial bodies that constitute gravitationally balanced regions of space within the vicinity of other planets, located 60 degrees before and behind the world.

Most of the trojan asteroids we all know about share Jupiter's orbit, but other planets have them too, including Mars and Earth too.

What makes (101429) 1998 VF31 (hereafter '101429') interesting is that among the Red Planet's trailing trojans (the ones that follow behind Mars because it orbits the Sun), 101429 appears to be unique.

Depiction of Mars and trojans; 101429 is the blue point circling L5. (AOP)

The rest of the group, called the L5 Martian Trojans, all belong to what's called the Eureka family, consisting of 5261 Eureka – the primary Mars trojan discovered – and a bunch of small fragments believed to own come loose from their parent space rock.

101429 is different, though, and in an exceedingly new study led by astronomers from the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium (AOP) in European countries, researchers wanted to look at why.

Using a spectrograph called X-SHOOTER on the EU Southern Observatory's 8-m Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, the team examined how sunlight reflects off 101429 and its L5 kin within the Eureka family. Only, it's like 101429 and also the Eureka clan aren't kin in spite of everything, with the analysis revealing 101429 shows a spectral match for a satellite much closer to home.

"The spectrum of this particular asteroid seems to be almost a dead-ringer for parts of the Moon where there's exposed bedrock like crater interiors and mountains," explains AOP astrochemist Galin Borisov.

While we won't make certain yet why that's, the researchers say it's plausible that this Martian trojan's origins began somewhere far from Mars, with 101429 representing a "relic fragment of the Moon's original solid crust".

If that's true, how did the Moon's long-lost twin find yourself as a trojan bound along with Mars?

Spectral comparison of 101429 and the Moon's surface. (AOP

"The early system was very different from the place we see today," explains lead author of the study, AOP astronomer Apostolos Christou.

"The space between the newly-formed planets was filled with debris and collisions were commonplace. Large asteroids [planetesimals] were constantly hitting the Moon and therefore the other planets. A shard from such a collision could have reached the orbit of Mars when the earth was still forming and was trapped in its Trojan clouds."

It's a captivating idea, but the researchers say it is not the sole explanation for 101429's past. it is also possible, and maybe more likely, that the trojan instead represents a fraction of Mars chipped off by an identical quite incident impacting the Red Planet; or it would just be a commonplace asteroid that, through the weathering processes of radiation, ended up looking a bit like the Moon.

Further observations with even more powerful spectrographs may be able to shed more light on this question of space parentage, as could a future spacecraft visit, the team says, "which could, on the way to the Trojans, obtain spectra at Mars or the Moon for direct comparison with the asteroid data".

Astronomers Confirm a Rogue Earth-Sized Planet Careening Through Our Galaxy

 Earth orbits the sun sort of a ship sailing in a circle around its anchor. But what if someone - or something - cut that ship loose?

Unbound from any star or system, what would become of a little world flying helplessly and heedlessly through interstellar space? What happens when a planet goes rogue?

Scientists suspect that billions of free-floating or "rogue" planets may exist within the Milky Way, but to this point, only some of the candidates have turned up among the 4,000-or-so worlds discovered beyond our scheme.

Most of those potential rogue planets appear to be enormous, measuring anywhere from two to 40 times the mass of Jupiter (one Jupiter is such as about 300 Earths). But now, astronomers believe they've detected a rogue world like no other: a small, free-floating planet, roughly the mass of Earth, gallivanting through the gut of the extragalactic nebula.

This discovery, reported on October 29 within the Astrophysical Journal Letters, may mark the littlest rogue planet ever detected, and it could help prove a long-standing cosmic theory.

According to the study authors, this small world may well be the primary real evidence that free-floating, Earth-sized planets could also be a number of the foremost common objects within the galaxy.

"The odds of detecting such a low-mass object are extremely low," lead study author Przemek Mroz, a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology, told Live Science in an email.

"Either we were very lucky, or such objects are quite common within the galaxy. they'll be as common as stars."

Einstein's hand glass

Most exoplanets in our galaxy are visible only due to their host stars. in a very literal sense, stars provide the sunshine that enables astronomers to directly observe alien worlds.

When a planet is simply too small or too distant to be seen directly, scientists can still detect it from the slight gravitational pull it exerts on its host star (called the velocity method) or by the flickering that happens when a planet passes ahead of the star's Earth-facing side (the transit method).

Rogue planets, by definition, don't have any star to light their way - or to light a telescope's thanks to them. Instead, detecting rogue planets involves a facet of Einstein's theory of relativity referred to as gravitational lensing.

Through this phenomenon, a planet (or even more massive object) acts as a cosmic hand glass that temporarily bends the sunshine of objects behind it from Earth's perspective.

"If a large object passes between an Earth-based observer and an overseas source star, its gravity may deflect and focus light from the source," Mroz explained in an exceeding statement. "The observer will measure a brief brightening of the source star."

The smaller that light-bending object is, the briefer the star's perceived brightening is going to be. While a planet several times the mass of Jupiter might create a brightening effect that lasts some days, a measly planet the mass of Earth will brighten the source star for under some hours or less, the researchers said. This exceptionally rare occurrence is termed "microlensing."

"Chances of observing microlensing are extremely slim," Mroz added within the statement. "If we observed just one source star, we might wait almost 1,000,000 years to work out the source being microlensed."

Fortunately, Mroz and his colleagues weren't observing only 1 star for his or her study - they were watching many several them. Using observations from the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE), a star survey based at the University of Warsaw in Poland that has turned up a minimum of 17 exoplanets since 1992, the team stared into the middle of the extragalactic nebula, searching for any signs of microlensing.

In June 2016, they witnessed the shortest microlensing event ever seen. The star in question, located roughly 27,000 light-years away within the densest part of the galaxy, brightened for just 42 minutes.

Calculations showed that the offending object wasn't sure to any star within 8 astronomical units (AU, or eight times the typical distance from Earth to the Sun), suggesting it had been almost certainly a little planet on the run, ejected from its home system after a brush with a far more massive object.

Depending on how far-flung the earth is from the source star (it's impossible to inform with current technology), the rogue world is probably going between one-half and one Earth mass. In either case, this roaming world would be the lowest-mass rogue planet ever detected. consistent with Mroz, that's a "huge milestone" for the science of planet formation.

"Theories of planet formation have predicted that the bulk of free-floating planets should be of Earth-mass or smaller, but this can be the primary time that we could find such a low-mass planet," Mroz said.

"It's really amazing that Einstein's theory allows us to detect a small piece of rock floating within the galaxy."

Many more tiny pieces of rock may soon follow, study co-author Radek Poleski of the University of Warsaw told Live Science.

Future planet-hunting telescopes, like NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (slated to launch within the mid-2020s), are rather more sensitive to the galaxy's teensiest microlensing events than the nearly 30-year-old OGLE experiment is, Poleski said. If orphan planets of roughly Earth's mass are indeed a number of the foremost common denizens of the galaxy, it should not be long before more of the surface.

Scientists in Japan Just Found a Detailed Record of Earth's Last Magnetic Switcharoo

 Every 200,000 to 300,000 years, Earth's magnetic poles reverse. What was once the North Pole becomes the south and the other way around. it is a time of invisible upheaval.

The last reversal was unusual because it absolutely was to see you later ago. for a few reasons, the poles have remained oriented the way they're now for about three-quarters of 1,000,000 years. a replacement study has revealed a number of the detail of that reversal.

The study of the Earth's magnetic flux is termed paleomagnetism. It involves the study of rocks and sediments and sometimes archaeological materials. Rocks that were once molten retain a record of the Earth's field of force as they solidified.

The related field of magnetostratigraphy studies the record of geomagnetic reversals that are contained in those rocks. By dating the rocks, researchers can construct a timeline of the Earth's reversals.

The last reversal is known as the Matuyama-Brunhes geomagnetic reversal after the co-discoverers: Bernard Brunhes, a French geophysicist, and Motonori Matuyama, a Japanese geophysicist. Over the years since its discovery, researchers have tried to grasp exactly when it happened, and also how long it took.

This new study is titled "A full sequence of the Matuyama–Brunhes geomagnetic reversal within the Chiba composite section, Central Japan." The lead author is Yuki Haneda, a project researcher at the National Institute of Polar Research and a postdoctoral research fellow at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan.

The paper is published in the journal Progress in Earth and Planetary Science.

Lava flows are a reliable indicator of the orientation of Earth's magnetic poles at the time the lava solidified. But what they cannot provide could be a timeline. They're more like snapshots that freeze a flash in time.

Lava flows are very helpful when it involves understanding the Earth's force field at the time of solidification. "However, lava sequences cannot provide continuous paleomagnetic records because of the character of sporadic eruptions," lead author Haneda said in very promulgation.

A better record will be found in some sediment deposits, which may form over an extended period of your time. one amongst these deposits is named the Chiba composite section. It's in Japan, and geophysicists consider it to be a really detailed record of the Matuyama-Brunhes reversal.

"In this study, we collected new samples and conducted paleo- and rock-magnetic analyses of samples from the Chiba composite section, never-ending and expanded marine succession in Central Japan, to reconstruct the complete sequence of the Matuyama-Brunhes geomagnetic reversal," Haneda said.

The Chiba composite section is widely considered to contain the foremost detailed marine sedimentary record of the Matuyama-Brunhes geomagnetic reversal, per Haneda.

It is the international standard for the lower boundary of the center Pleistocene Subseries and the Chibanian Stage — when a man emerged as a species.

The Chiba composite section is notable for its well-preserved pollen and marine micro- and macrofossils. It also contains tephra beds. Tephra could be a fragmentary material produced by volcanic eruptions, normally spoken as volcanic ash.

All in all, Chiba provides the foremost reliable chronostratigraphic framework of the fundamental measure round the Brunhes-Matuyama reversal.

What they found goes against what other studies have uncovered, especially when it involves how long the reversal took to occur. Some studies suggest it took several thousand years, while another suggested that the reversal was completed in one human lifetime.

The different time estimates depend largely on where on Earth researchers gather their evidence. This study supported the Chiba composite section says it took about 20,000 years, including a ten,000 year period of instability leading up to the reversal.

"Our data is one amongst the foremost detailed paleomagnetic record during the Matuyama-Brunhes geomagnetic reversal, offering deep insight into the mechanism of the geomagnetic reversal," Haneda said.

The marine micro-fossils and pollen found within the Chiba composite section also hold clues to the magnetic reversal. The team of researchers goes to analyze fossils and pollen next to undertake to find out more.

This figure from the study shows the location of the study area on Japan's Boso Peninsula. (Haneda et al., 2020)

The question that looms over Earth's geomagnetic reversals is 'What effect do they have?' That's outside the scope of this study, but it is the focus of other research. 

Some researchers have wondered if magnetic reversals have contributed to temperature change. While the evidence is nowhere near complete, some scientists have outlined how reversals might play a task.

In 2006 a team of researchers made a presentation to the American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting titled "Does the Earth's force field Influence Climate?"

When mentioning the accepted causes of temperature change on Earth, the team said, "Magnetism has seldom been invoked, and evidence for connections between climate and force field variations have received little attention."

"The most intriguing feature is also recently proposed archaeomagnetic jerks. These seem to correlate with significant climatic events."

Archaeomagnetic jerks are quick changes within the Earth's geomagnetic field that are localized instead of global. While there's only a correlation between them and climate, a causal link might sooner or later be established. Could there even be a causal link between magnetic reversals and climate?

The effect that magnetic reversals wear animals is likewise a desirable and open question. Many animals undertake long, migratory voyages. Whales, birds, and sea turtles, for instance.

And there's evidence that some migratory species depend upon Earth's force field to navigate. The phenomenon is named magnetoreception.

How are creatures that depend upon magnetoreception suffering from geomagnetic reversals?

During a reversal, the magnetic poles not only switch places but the sphere strength drops. There might also be temporary poles at the equator or perhaps multiple temporary poles. The poles may also wander around, leaving their original position and returning before eventually switching completely.

It's not clear what effect a reversal has on animals. But there's some evidence that solar storms, with all their magnetic activity, can create confusion for migrating whales and will even drive them to beach themselves.

During a reversal, the protective effect of the Earth's field of force is reduced. More radiation may reach the surface of Earth during a reversal, which could put animals like whales in peril the identical way a solar storm might. However, the evidence for this can be not clear.

In any case, life on Earth has survived many geomagnetic reversals, and still, life thrives. Modern humans haven't faced one yet, so observing the following one are very instructive. 

The most likely effect is going to be on our power and communications systems, including satellites. because the global magnetic flux weakens, more of the Sun's radiation can get through. we all know from things just like the Carrington Event that that scenario is often very damaging. 

While this study can't address these questions, it does advance our understanding of the previous reversal. 

"Our results provide an in-depth and expanded sedimentary record of the M–B geomagnetic reversal and offer valuable new information to further understand the mechanisms and dynamics of geomagnetic reversals," the authors conclude.

The Mystery of The Platypus Deepens With The Discovery of Its Biofluorescent Fur

 Scientists are seeing the Australian platypus in a whole new light. Under a source of illumination, this bizarre-looking creature appears even more peculiar than normal, glowing a soft, greenish-blue hue rather than the everyday brown we're wont to see.

The recent discovery has not been found in the other monotreme species, and it's scientists wondering: Have we been overlooking an ancient world of fluorescent fur?

"Biofluorescence has now been observed in placental New World flying squirrels, marsupial New World opossums, and therefore the monotreme platypus of Australia and Tasmania," the authors write.

"These taxa, inhabiting three continents and a various array of ecosystems, represent the main lineages of Mammalia."

(Anich et al., Mammalia, 2020)

Over the centuries, bio fluorescence has been reported in various plants, fungi, fruits, flowers, insects, and birds. It's only recently, however, that scientists have begun to actively hunt examples within the kingdom. Many discoveries thus far were simply happenstance. 

In 2015, for example, scientists chanced upon the primary fluorescent marine turtle while searching for glowing coral. Two years later, the primary fluorescent frog was found unexpectedly, and therefore the team advised others to "start carrying a UV flashlight to the field".

Among mammals, the primary example of bio fluorescence was reported in 1983 within the Virginia opossum, the sole marsupial in North America. But it wasn't until 2017, and by complete accident, that researchers uncovered something similar in North America's flying squirrels (Glaucomys), which are categorized as placental mammals.

While conducting an evening survey of lichens, researchers were amazed to show their LED torch on a bright, bubble-gum pink opossum.

One of the sole things the opossum and squirrel share in common is their nocturnal lifestyles. this is often also when UV light is at its strongest, which suggests the trait can be common among mammals most active in the dark, dawn, or dusk.

Like flying squirrels and opossums in North America, platypuses in Australia are active in the dark. However, they're separated from these other animals by some 150 million years of evolution.

Australia's hidden glows

Despite being home to a number of the foremost primitive mammals on Earth, relatively little attention has been paid to bio fluorescence in Australia's animals. But if they even have glowing fur, the trait may well be way more ancient and potentially more common among mammals than we thought.

"It was a combination of serendipity and curiosity that led us to shine a UV light on the platypuses at the sector Museum," recalls biologist Paula Spaeth Anich from Northland College. 

"But we were also curious about seeing how deep within the mammalian tree the trait of bio fluorescent fur went."

Researchers began with two stuffed museum specimens, a male and a female collected in Tasmania. These creatures' fur was found to soak up short UV wavelengths so emit actinic radiation, fluorescing green or cyan. 

Examining another platypus specimen collected from New South Wales, researchers found the identical thing.

"The pelage of this specimen, which was uniformly brown under actinic radiation, also bio fluoresced green under UV light," the authors write.

To their knowledge, the team says this can be the primary time bio fluorescence has been reported in monotremes. However, in June of this year, a member of The Queensland Mycological Society claimed to own discovered a road-killed platypus with an analogous glow.

"The fur of the platypus mostly appeared dark/purple needless to say under the UV light, but a number of it turned mosstone, although not brightly so," writes Linda Reinhold within the society's non-peer-reviewed newsletter.

Reinhold also found two northern brown bandicoots on the road with fluorescent pink fur, and he or she did manage to snap those.

Lighting up the dark

It's still too early to mention what advantage this trait might give nocturnal mammals – our sample sizes are too small – although scientists have some ideas.

In 2017, when the flying squirrels were discovered with bio fluorescent fur, some thought it would need to do with camouflage since many trees are covered in bio fluorescent moss and lichen.

However, the bandicoots found by Reinhold are ground-dwelling mammals, and their fluorescence may make them stand out.

Standing out may well be a plus, betting on the circumstances. for a few birds, their bio fluorescent feathers play part in mating rituals. Fish use the trait to speak among themselves.

Yet within the platypus, both the male and feminine specimens showed similar fluorescence, suggesting the trait isn't sexually dimorphic. What's more, because the platypus usually swims with its eyes closed, the glow in its fur probably isn't there to speak with others of its kind.

Instead, researchers think it'd help camouflage the platypus from other UV-sensitive nocturnal predators by absorbing UV light rather than reflecting it.

Further study is required within the wild before we are able to say of course what's happening. we do not even know the way the bio fluorescence of this fur even works, and also the benefits of this trait might vary from species to species.

Still, the very fact that this strange glow exists across the fur of egg-laying monotremes, marsupials, and placental mammals suggests it's deep roots.

If nothing else, the invention could be a nice reminder of our sheer ignorance.

Researchers Decipher The Secret Ingredients of Ancient Egyptian Ink

 An analysis of 12 ancient papyrus fragments has revealed some surprising details about how the Egyptians mixed their red and black ink – findings which could give us lots more insight into how the earliest writers managed to urge their words down on the page.

We know that ancient Egyptians were using inks to put in writing a minimum of as far back as 3200 BCE. However, the samples studied during this case were dated to 100-200 CE and originally collected from the famous Tebtunis temple library – the sole large-scale institutional library is known to possess survived from the amount.

Using a kind of synchrotron radiation techniques, including the utilization of high-powered X-rays to analyse microscopic samples, the researchers revealed the fundamental, molecular, and structural composition of the inks in unprecedented detail.

"By applying the 21st century, state-of-the-art technology to reveal the hidden secrets of ancient ink technology, we are contributing to the disclosing of the origin of writing practices," says physicist Marine Cotte from the EU Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in France.

The red inks, typically wont to highlight headings, instructions, or keywords, were presumably coloured by the natural pigment ochre, the researchers say – traces of iron, aluminium, and hematite point to the present being the case.

More intriguing was the invention of lead-based compounds in both the black and therefore the red inks, with none of the normal lead-based pigments used for colouring. this implies the lead was added for technical purposes.

"Lead-based driers prevent the binder from spreading an excessive amount of, when ink or paint is applied on the surface of paper or papyrus," the team writes in their study.

"Indeed, within the present case, lead forms an invisible halo surrounding the ochre particles."

As well as explaining how the traditional Egyptians kept their papyrus smudge-free, it also suggests some pretty specialised ink manufacturing techniques. It's likely that the temple priests who wrote using this ink weren't those who were originally mixing it.

"The indisputable fact that the lead wasn't added as a pigment but as a drier infers that the ink had quite a complex recipe and will not be made by just anyone," says Egyptologist Thomas Christiansen, from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

"We hypothesise that there have been workshops specialised in preparing inks."

X-ray fluorescence maps showing iron (red) and lead (blue) in the red ink. (The Papyrus Carlsberg Collection/ESRF)

Interestingly enough, the preparation of amount of money inside a workshop has also been mentioned during a Greek document dated to the third century CE, backing up the thought of specialized ink mixing in Egypt and across the Mediterranean.

This technique of using lead as a desiccant was also adopted in 15th century Europe as work of art began to seem – but it might seem that the traditional Egyptians discovered the trick a minimum of 1,400 years earlier.

The researchers are planning more tests and different forms of analysis, but what they've found thus far is already fascinating – another example of how modern-day scientific instruments can unlock even more secrets from the past, even right down to coloured ink.

"The advanced synchrotron-based microanalyses have provided us with invaluable knowledge of the preparation and composition of red and black inks in ancient Egypt and Rome 2,000 years ago," says Christiansen.

A Rare Hybrid of a Comet And an Asteroid Is Showing Off Its Cometary Traits

Centaurs are rare celestial objects which will combine a number of the various features of asteroids and comets. They're basically rocky in nature, like asteroids, but may also throw out clouds of dust and gas as their exteriors vaporize, like comets.

When centaurs emit these gases, they're considered active. We've only ever found 18 chemically active centaurs within the last century some, but now a replacement one has been added to the list – and it would be ready to tell us more about how these mysterious flying rocks develop their unique characteristics.

Keeping a detailed eye on centaurs may be a huge challenge – they seem to be a great distance away, orbit in irregular ways, and take up lots of telescope time – but during this case, researchers studied archival images similarly as used new data gathered from the Dark Energy Camera at the Inter-American Observatory and therefore the Walter Baade Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory, both in Chile, and therefore the Large Monolithic Imager at Lowell Observatory's Discovery Channel Telescope in Arizona.

"We developed a unique technique that mixes observational measurements – for instance, colour, and dirt mass – with modelling efforts to estimate such characteristics because the object's volatile sublimation and orbital dynamics," says astronomer Colin Chandler, from the Northern Arizona University.

That technique, involving a specially developed algorithm to appear for activity traces in existing space imagery, revealed evidence of Centaur 2014 OG392 converting solids into gases (sublimation) and giving up a protracted comet-like halo.

Backed up with new observations recorded over the course of the past two years, it seems clear that this particular centaur is special. Computer modelling then helped the astronomers work out what kinds of ice might be burning off the rock.

It's a tricky calculation to create, not least because the asteroid is perhaps not made of one form of ice but from a combination of materials that may all burn differently. The researchers think they know what's happening, however, and what can be happening on other similar objects.

"We detected a coma as far as 400,000 km [248,548 miles] from 2014 OG392," says Chandler, "and our analysis of sublimation processes and dynamical lifetime suggest carbonic acid gas and/or ammonia are the foremost likely candidates for causing activity on this and other active centaurs."

A coma is an envelope of ice and comet dust that forms around the comet's nucleus because it passes near the Sun. it's the coma that provides comets with their fuzzy appearance.

Because of the invention, The Centaur is not any longer a centaur any longer – it is a fully-fledged comet, with the designation C/2014 OG392 (PANSTARRS), something that the researchers are "very excited" about.

These varieties of objects, et al. like them, are thought to possess barely changed since the very period of time of the system, which means they're incredibly useful time capsules for studying how our planets formed and settled into their own orbits.

Any centaurs, comets, and asteroids that are still around are still around for a reason – they haven't spun out of the scheme or flown into the Sun – and scientists can work backwards from that.

There's lots more to get about centaurs, and we're learning more about how they work all the time. As more data is gathered and better analysis techniques are developed, we should always finally be able to solve a number of the mysteries surrounding these weird and wonderful system travellers.