Ever wondered why North is at the top of our maps?

If you're assuming there are logical, scientific, Nature-driven reasons for it - yeah, me too.

In fact, they're often whimsical, arbitrary or just plain ridiculous.

Hold onto your hat. This may turn your world upside-down.

1/ We start in 1154 AD.

Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi is publishing a very special book. It's about the WORLD.

It's as heavy on calculations as it is on narrative - & thanks to its map made of silver, just plain *heavy*.

This map is astoundingly accurate for its time...

2/

This is Sandy Island, in Australia's Coral Sea:
- 15 miles long, 3 wide
- First recorded in 1774
- Not actually there.

It's the world's most recently undiscovered island, after 2 previous attempts to undiscover it failed. (What a sentence!)

Here's the story...

1/ In April 2000, radio enthusiasts on a 'DX-pedition' (radio-mapping a remote place - “DX” is telegraphic jargon for "distant") sailed in search of Sandy Island.

Here's a modern Landsat pic of what they found. If you *really* squint...

Nah. No point! There's nothing there.

2/

I thought I knew the story of the "lost world" off the east coast of Britain, inhabited by Mesolithic people until rising sea waters engulfed it around 8,000 years ago...

But I didn't know about the *tsunami*.

Holy hell.

1/ What follows is my imperfect grasp of things.

Imperfect because I'm just an enthusiast who likes science - and also imperfect because, excitingly, the work is still going on, as part of one of the greatest prehistoric archaeological investigations in history.

2/

When I wrote about the Zanclean Megaflood filling the Mediterranean in 12-18 months (!) it was wistfully.

I'm English. Lovely place, England! But - Big Geological Drama? Not round 'ere, sadly.

Imagine my delight at what geophysicists have found in the English Channel!

1/ 500,000 years ago, Britain was still part of the continental European landmass via a land-bridge - the Weald-Artois anticline, formed as rock buckled across Europe as the African plate ground northwards over tens of millions of years.

(This also made the Alps!)

But...

2/

I recently learned something amazing about the Arctic - & my tiny mind is blown.

In my ignorance, I've always believed it's featureless & barren. But now I've learned what's underneath it - & if THAT was on dry land, it'd be a wonder of the modern world.

Buckle up!

1/ This is Mikhail Lomonosov (1711-1765): Russian polymath, scientist, writer - a lesser-known Isaac Newton.

He discovered the law of conservation of mass in chemical reactions, first saw Venus has an atmosphere, founded some of the key principles of modern geology...

2/

OK, this is nuts.

In Sept 2023, geophysicists over the world started monitoring an odd signal coming from the ground under them.

It was recorded in the Arctic, then Antarctica - then everywhere, every 90 seconds, regular as a metronome - for NINE DAYS.

What the HELL?

1/ In seismology, this is a USO: an Unidentified Seismic Object.

Perhaps if this discovery had leaked into mainstream news as quickly as potential alien biosignatures tend to do, we’d currently be seeing a big comeback for the HOLLOW EARTH ‘theory’.

Thankfully not the case!

2/

A while back, I learned something mindblowing about the geological history of the Mediterranean Sea, and I just can't get it out of my head.

Now I'm going to make it *your* problem too. Sorry.

Hang onto your hat. This gets wild.

1/ This is the Strait of Gibraltar, where Europe and Africa reach out to almost touch each other.

At this point there's only 13km/ 8 miles between them - & it's where the Med feeds into the Atlantic.

Imagine if something absurdly violent happened & it closed up?

2/

On the 21st July 1976, NASA released the very first colour image taken by the Viking 1 lander from the surface of Mars.

And....wait, what?

The Martian sky is BLUE?

1/ This is obviously not what anyone was expecting. Mars is...

Well, you can see it for yourself on a clear night, with your naked eye. It's noticeably red - about as red as Betelgeuse, tenth-brightest star in our night sky.

No blue. So - what? WHAT?

2/

You know the BEST thing about ancient history? All that pristine grey-white stone! SO CLASSY AND REGAL.

Look at this gorgeously monochrome scene from 'Gladiator'. Just look at how *right* it looks.

Yeah. Except - no. Get ready for a shock.

1/ In the middle of the Parthenon in Athens, the ancient Greek sculptor Phidias (480 – 430 BC) built a gigantic statue of Athena Parthenosos, about 11 metres high.

Alas, nothing remains of it today. But there are enough accounts of its construction to make a replica...

2/

When my Zanclean Megaflood thread went nuts in February, some folk said "look into a thing called Atlantropa! It's just as mindblowing!"

They weren't wrong. And now I can't get *this* story out my head either.

So, once more, here we go.

1/ It's 1928.

This is German architect Herman Sörgel. Horrified by the First World War, keen to see everyone put down their weapons & actually, properly work together for a change, he's just had a idea that would solve *everything*.

He's going to drain the Mediterranean.

2/

There's a vast patch of seagrass off the coast of Australia (3 x the size of Manhattan) - and now genetic testing has discovered it's a *single plant* around 4,500 years old:

bbc.co.uk/news/world-aus…

But incredibly, this isn't our planet's biggest living organism...

1/ Oooh. Actually, I might be dead wrong on this. Last I heard, there are single examples of honey fungus in Oregon & Russia that hold that title:

scientificamerican.com/article/strang…

(The Oregon fungus could be up to 8,650 years old, which makes us look a bit like mayflies in comparison.)

If today's a slow one, how about a stroll along the world's longest mountain chain?

No, not Himalaya (2,500km). And not the Andes (7,000km) either.

This one's....65,000km long.

But it's ok. We'll just do a bit of it.

1/ We start in Iceland. (Credit: flickr.com/photos/sackerm…)

OK, I lied. It's only really here can you walk along it: the Þingvellir National Park, where, geologically speaking, North America & Europe are slowly drifting apart.

Enjoy the sunshine! There's none where we're going.

2/

Off of the news that Twitter is banning advertisements that contradict the scientific consensus on climate change (washingtonpost.com/technology/202…) and the inevitable kerfuffle, a distinction worth noting:

Denialism is not the same as healthy, questioning criticism. Not at all.

1/ This gets incredibly complicated and tangled, but - whenever something is contradicting the consensus with *absolute certainty*, it's probably bullshit. Utter certainty is the smoking gun there.

No curiosity, no interested questions, no willingness to be proven wrong.

2/

I thought I knew the story of the "lost world" off the east coast of Britain, inhabited by Mesolithic people until rising sea waters engulfed it around 8,000 years ago...

But I didn't know about the *tsunami*.

Holy hell.

1/

(Image: bigissue.com/opinion/discov…) What follows is my imperfect grasp of things. Imperfect because I'm just an enthusiast who likes science - and also imperfect because, excitingly, *the work is happening right now*, in one of the greatest prehistoric archaeological investigations in history.

2/

I recently learned something mindblowing about the geological history of the Mediterranean Sea, and I just can't get it out of my head.

Now I'm going to make it *your* problem too. Sorry.

Hang onto your hat. This is wild.

1/ This is the Strait of Gibraltar, where Europe and Africa reach out to *almost* touch each other.

At this point there's only 13 km/ 8 miles between them - and it's where the Med feeds into the Atlantic.

Imagine if something absurdly Roland-Emmerichy happened & it closed up?

2/

The first time I saw the Northern Lights in real-time, like many folk, I was shocked. "But - I thought they moved slowly, like clouds?"

As you can see: not so much:

https://twitter.com/RomppainenJari/status/1483076545950408710

So I got curious. What else don't I know about these amazing things?

1/ Firstly: they're not just green.

Different heights of our atmosphere = different gases, & when charged particles from the sun excite gases at different altitudes, you get different colours.

*Wildly* different. Blue, pink, purple, yellow and (rarely) red.

I had no idea.

2/

With the best illusions, you can know how they're done and yet your mind's still immediately flummoxed.

This is my favourite. Those table legs? Impossible - but absolutely real. (This is a *photo*.)

An appreciation 🧵for the oldest trick in the book:

1/ Here is Professor Brian Cox CBE OBE (far right of pic) in his former p/t job (1986-1992).

I post this to illustrate that scientists still have *all sorts* of backgrounds, including in the Arts...

(And maybe also because this photo is amazing. Which it certainly is.)

2/

It’s December 4th, 2016, and American chess Grandmaster Timur Gareyev is dozens of moves into a game against his human opponents.

That's "opponents", plural. He's playing 48 people simultaneously, on 48 boards.

But that's the least wild thing going on here...

🧵1/ Gareyev is also pedalling away hard on an exercise bike.

The mind's deeply connected to the body (or indeed *is* the body). Work up a sweat to send your thinking into overdrive.

He'll do this for 19 hours.

This is still not the wildest thing.

2/

It's common for writers under terrifying deadline pressure to rely a bit too much on Wikipedia? Ahem. Easily done. It can't be TOO far wrong?

But a few months ago, researching a newsletter, I learned just how disastrous this can be.

An alarming 🧵 with good, hard LOLs:

1/ I'm old enough to remember t'days before t'Internet (black & white, everyone walked really fast, piano music etc) so I can emphatically say I love Wikipedia.

An encyclopedia edited by nearly 200,000 people - and it's *readable*? (And democratic?)

I'm a fan.

But...

2/

In January of this year, photos started bouncing round the internet of this deeply weird thing happening in the sky above Glasgow. Photoshop trickery?

The bizarre truth:
- yes, everyone really saw these
- no, they're not faked or manmade
- they absolutely don't exist.

🧵

1/ Here's the same thing happening above London (the other one, in Ontario, Canada) in 2018.

Again: these *aren't* spotlights shining upwards. They alse aren't the Northern Lights.

Also, they aren't actually there, even though everyone can see them.

Deep, deep weirdness.

2/

I just wrote a piece about pareidolia, the "you can't unsee this" bias...

everythingisamazing.substack.com/p/why-everywhe…

...and all the examples I found are delightful, ludicrous and worrying! (It's amazing how completely it hijacks our mind.)

I dare you to unsee the following examples.

1/ In 1994, Diana Duyser of Florida spotted...something in her grilled cheese sandwich (the "Holy Toast").

She immediately did what any of us would do: packed it in cotton wool & waited for eBay to be invented, so she could auction it to online casino Golden Palace for $28,000.

2/