X-Rays and Happy Meals

I'm-a-try something new here.

There's no comic today. Just a text update. I had a couple of comics ready to go in mid February, but stuff came up and I had to put the pen down for a bit. Unfortunately, once you get out of a comics routine, it's hard to get back. There's some new ideas a'cookin and hopefully I'll find some time to put pen to paper and draw more comics soon.

In the meantime, I have a fun story to share.

Avatar

Okay, it's been long enough. Has everyone seen Avatar yet? Yeah? Good.

Diamonds!

I think the title of the article below is interesting from a science journalism point of view. The direct accomplishment of the study was about the qualities of liquid diamond, a state that is very difficult to achieve. Because of this research, we now know that solid diamonds, like frozen water, are less dense than their liquid counterpart. And the conditions to achieve this are insane (Reminder: They melted a diamond with LASERS!), BUT similar conditions happen to exist on Uranus and Neptune. And based on other studies showing a fair amount of carbon on those planets, the hypothesis that they may have giant diamond oceans and diamond icebergs now has some more evidence supporting it.

Ah, Science!

Source:
Diamond Oceans Possible on Uranus, Neptune

Nerd Cred

References:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Hedgehog
• McDonald, Kate (19 Jan 2009) "Robotnikin takes on Sonic hedgehog". Australian Life Scientist.
• Simonite, T. (15 Dec 2005) "Pokémon Blocks Gene Name". Nature 438, 897
• Astley, R. (Aug 1987) http://tinyurl.com/2g9mgh

Season Premiere

I'm starting it back up! Hopefully I can pump out 2-3 per week.

The Van Wickle Gates Beckon

This comic originally appeared in the Commencement Issue of the Brown Daily Herald. Since I have graduated, this is likely the last edition of Nightmarishly Elastic. Thanks for reading! :) EDIT 1/16/10: Woohoo! It's back!

Bailout. Yer doin it rong.