Lost in Space
Space is big, cold and silent: the perfect place for questions nobody can answer.
501. If I scream in space, will anyone hear me?
No. Sound needs air to travel, and space has none. You'd just be making a very dramatic face. Your scream would stay inside your helmet, where only you could hear it, which is honestly the worst audience. That's why space movies with loud explosions are lying to you. Real space battles would be completely silent, like a fireworks show with the volume off. Astronauts on spacewalks talk to each other by radio, which turns their voices into radio waves that don't need air. So if you need to scream in space, do it into the radio. Mission Control will be concerned. They'll ask if you're okay.
502. Do astronauts get space-sick?
Many do at first. Their inner ears get confused about which way is down, because there isn't one. For the first few days, astronauts can feel dizzy, queasy and headachy, while their faces puff up as fluids float toward their heads. NASA calls this "space adaptation syndrome." Astronauts call it "the space barfs." Barfing in zero gravity is a serious event, since nothing falls down; it just floats around until someone catches it with a bag. Thankfully, most astronauts adjust within a few days and then spend the rest of the mission doing somersaults for fun.
503. Can I order pizza to the space station?
It's been done once, as a publicity stunt. Tipping the driver remains complicated. In 2001, a pizza chain paid a reported million dollars or so to send a salami pizza to the International Space Station on a cargo rocket. It had to be specially made with extra salt and vinegar to survive the trip, which is not a topping anyone asked for. Delivery took weeks. The astronaut ate it, smiled for the camera and was probably very polite about it. Normal pizza is impossible in space because cheese and crumbs float everywhere. Space pizza night is mostly tortillas with sauce. It's sad, but brave.
504. Is the moon made of cheese?
No, it's mostly rock and dust. The cheese rumour was almost certainly started by someone hungry. The idea goes back hundreds of years to old stories about fools who saw the moon reflected in a pond and thought it was a big round cheese. When astronauts brought back 382 kilograms of moon rocks, scientists tasted none of it, sadly, but tested all of it, and found zero cheddar, zero brie and zero swiss. The moon does have holes like swiss cheese, though; they're called craters. And it smells, astronauts said, like spent gunpowder. Not cheese. Cheese would have been better.
505. What does space smell like?
Astronauts say their suits smell like seared steak, hot metal or welding fumes after a spacewalk. Space smells like a barbecue you weren't invited to. Scientists think the smell comes from oxygen atoms clinging to the suits and reacting when they come back inside. NASA once hired a chemist to recreate the smell of space so astronauts could prepare for it during training. Some companies now sell "space smell" perfume. It's not popular for dates. If space smells like a barbecue, the universe is basically a giant backyard. Somebody, somewhere, is flipping burgers on a star.
506. Do stars twinkle, or are they blinking at me?
They twinkle because Earth's air wobbles their light. They aren't winking at you, but you can wink back. Starlight travels for years, sometimes thousands of years, across space without a single bump, then hits our turbulent atmosphere in the last few seconds and starts jiggling around like a passenger on a bumpy bus. Planets usually twinkle less, because they're closer and appear as tiny discs rather than points. Astronauts in space see stars that shine steadily, without any twinkle at all. It's beautiful but a little boring. The twinkle is our atmosphere's way of adding sparkle to the show.
507. Can I see the flag on the moon with a telescope?
No telescope on Earth can see something that small from that far. You'll have to trust the paperwork. The moon is about 384,000 kilometres away, and a flag is about one metre wide. Spotting it would be like seeing a grain of rice from across the country. Orbiting spacecraft have taken photos of the landing sites, showing the bottoms of the landers, tracks and the shadows of flags, which is pretty cool. Scientists also bounce lasers off mirrors the astronauts left behind, and measure the time it takes for the light to come back. The moon has been holding up a mirror for us for 50 years. It's very patient.
508. Is there a gas station on the way to Mars?
No. Fill up before you go. The trip takes about seven months with zero snack stops. Space has no gas stations, no rest stops and no roadside diners selling pie. Some engineers have suggested making rocket fuel on Mars using ice and the carbon dioxide in its air, which would make Mars the first gas station in the solar system. Until then, rockets carry everything with them, like a family packing for a road trip, except the car weighs hundreds of tonnes. Kids on the trip to Mars would ask "are we there yet" (see question 450) roughly 900,000 times.
509. If I jump on the moon, how high will I go?
About six times higher than on Earth. Your best jump would finally get the recognition it deserves. Moon gravity is about one-sixth of Earth's, so a jump that gets you 50 centimetres here would take you three metres there, and you'd float down slowly, like a dandelion seed in a heavy coat. Astronauts on the moon found that hopping like a kangaroo was the easiest way to get around. They also fell over a lot, because their bulky suits made it hard to balance. It looked like a slow-motion blooper reel, broadcast to the entire planet. Every astronaut who fell over is still a hero.
510. Do aliens think we're the aliens?
Absolutely. In their textbooks, we're the weird ones with five fingers and a fondness for toast. Their scientists have written papers about us: "Earthlings: A Species That Lives on a Wet Rock and Argues About Pineapple on Pizza." Alien children have drawn pictures of us, with tiny heads, long noses and a hat. Alien movies show humans invading their peaceful planet with lawnmowers and leaf-blowers. If we ever meet, it'll be very awkward, like two people who both thought they were the host of the party. Someone will need to bring snacks to break the ice.
511. Can I name a star after my cat?
Companies will happily sell you a certificate, but astronomers won't use the name. Your cat doesn't care either way. Real star names are given by the International Astronomical Union, which is very serious and has never named anything "Mr. Whiskers." Most stars just get catalogue numbers like HD 140283, which sound like printer models. Your cat will look at the certificate, knock it off the table, and fall asleep in the envelope it came in. If you want to honour your cat, buy it a box. It'll appreciate that more than an entire burning ball of gas, light-years away.
512. Why isn't Pluto a planet anymore?
In 2006, astronomers redefined "planet" and Pluto didn't make the cut, so it's now a dwarf planet. It's still a planet in our hearts. The new rule said a planet must clear its orbit of other objects, and Pluto shares its neighbourhood with lots of icy rubble, like a person who never cleans their room (see question 476). Scientists were sad, schoolchildren wrote angry letters, and some states passed resolutions in Pluto's honour. In 2015, a spacecraft flew past Pluto and discovered a giant heart-shaped plain on its surface. Pluto heard all of it. Pluto still loves us. Pluto is the bigger person.
513. Is a shooting star a star that got fired?
It's a speck of space rock burning up in our atmosphere. It wasn't fired. It quit dramatically. Most shooting stars are smaller than a grain of sand, yet they glow brightly because they slam into the atmosphere at tens of kilometres per second. That's like a crumb going so fast it bursts into flames. Every year, Earth passes through clouds of comet dust, creating meteor showers with dozens of shooting stars an hour. The Perseids in August are the most famous. You lie on a blanket, look up and wish on each one. You'll run out of wishes before the sky runs out of stars.
514. Do astronauts float because they're light?
They're constantly falling around the Earth, which makes them feel weightless. Life on the space station is a never-ending roller-coaster drop. The station moves sideways so fast, about 28,000 kilometres an hour, that as it falls toward Earth, the Earth curves away beneath it. It keeps falling and keeps missing. That's what an orbit is: falling with style. Gravity up there is still about 90% as strong as on the ground. Astronauts aren't light; they're just very, very good at missing the planet. Next time you trip and don't fall, tell people you briefly achieved orbit.
515. If the universe is expanding, what's it expanding into?
Scientists are still arguing about it, and some say it isn't expanding into anything. Most people find this unsatisfying and go make a sandwich. The idea is that space itself is stretching, like dots drawn on a balloon moving apart as it inflates, except there's no outside of the balloon. Your brain will try to imagine "outside" and then politely shut down. Even astrophysicists find it weird; they just have better vocabulary for being confused. If you think about it too long, you'll start to feel tiny. That's when the sandwich helps. The sandwich is not expanding. The sandwich is just right.
516. Can I sleep in space?
Yes. Astronauts strap their sleeping bags to the wall so they don't drift into the controls overnight. Without gravity, there's no "lying down," so astronauts can sleep upright, sideways or upside down, and it all feels the same. Their arms float up in front of them like sleepwalking zombies, which looks very funny in photos. The space station orbits Earth every 90 minutes, so the sun rises and sets 16 times a day, which is confusing for your body. Astronauts use eye masks, ear plugs and schedules. Some report wonderful dreams of flying. Others dream they're falling. It's not a dream.
517. Was the Milky Way named after a candy bar?
The other way around. The galaxy had the name first, by a couple of thousand years. Ancient Greeks looked at the pale band of stars across the night sky and thought it looked like spilled milk, and they told a myth about it involving gods, a baby and an accident. The word "galaxy" even comes from the Greek word for milk. So our galaxy is basically a spilled glass of milk that nobody cleaned up for billions of years. The candy bar came along in the 1920s and borrowed the name. The galaxy has never received a single royalty cheque.
518. How many stars are there?
Our galaxy alone has somewhere between 100 and 400 billion, and there are hundreds of billions of galaxies. Counting them is a long weekend. Actually, if you counted one star per second, it would take you about 3,000 years just to count the stars in our galaxy, and you'd have to skip sleeping, eating and bathroom breaks. Some scientists estimate there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on every beach on Earth. You'd need a very big jar to hold them (see question 390). On a clear, dark night, you can see about 2,500 stars with your eyes. That's a good start. Keep going.
519. Can a planet be lonely?
Rogue planets drift through space with no star at all. They're the introverts of the universe. They were probably kicked out of their solar systems long ago by bigger planets, like a kid squeezed off the end of a crowded bench. Now they wander through the dark, cold and alone, with no sunrise and no sunset. Scientists think there may be billions of them in our galaxy, maybe even more than there are stars. That's a lot of lonely planets. If you ever feel lonely, remember that somewhere a rogue planet is drifting through the void. It would really like a postcard.
520. Do black holes suck everything in like a vacuum?
Only if you get too close. From far away, a black hole pulls like any other object of the same mass. It's a bad neighbour, not a vacuum cleaner. If our sun turned into a black hole (which it can't, it's too small), Earth would keep orbiting exactly as before, just in the dark and very cold. Get too close, though, and the pull becomes so strong that not even light can escape. Anything falling in would be stretched long and thin like spaghetti. Scientists actually call this "spaghettification." It's real, it's terrible and it's the only time science named something after pasta.
521. What's the dark side of the moon like?
It gets just as much sunlight as the near side. It's simply the side we never see. The moon is private about it. The moon spins exactly once for every trip around Earth, so the same face always looks at us, like a performer who never turns their back on the audience. The far side has more craters and fewer smooth dark patches than the side we know. Nobody saw it until 1959, when a Soviet spacecraft snapped a photo. In 2019, China landed a rover there for the first time. It found rocks. The moon had been hiding rocks. Very mysterious.
522. Can I bring my dog to space?
Dogs flew in the very early space programs. Today the waiting list is long, and the space suits don't have tail holes. The Soviet Union sent several dogs into space in the 1950s and 1960s. Two of them, Belka and Strelka, came back safely and became celebrities, and one of Strelka's puppies was given as a gift to an American president's family. A dog on the space station would be chaos: floating fur, floating drool and a tennis ball that never lands. Fetch would be impossible. The ball would just keep going forever, and the dog would be heartbroken.
523. Does the sun ever take a day off?
Never. It's been working for about 4.6 billion years without a vacation. It's due for retirement in roughly five billion more. When it does, it'll swell into a red giant, puff off its outer layers and shrink into a small, dim white dwarf, like a retired person moving into a condo. For now, it burns about 600 million tonnes of hydrogen every second, which is a lot of overtime. Even on cloudy days, the sun is working; it's just behind a curtain (see question 495). Clouds are not the sun's day off. They're its privacy screen.
524. If I fly in a straight line forever, will I come back
around?
Scientists aren't sure what shape the universe is. You might come back, but pack a lot of snacks. Current measurements suggest the universe is very close to flat, which means a straight line probably just keeps going. If it were curved like a ball, you might eventually loop around and arrive behind yourself, tapping your own shoulder. Either way, the trip would take far longer than the universe has existed, and you'd need a lot of granola bars. Also, the universe is expanding (see question 515), so the destination keeps moving away. It's like chasing a bus that's also stretching.
525. Is there weather on other planets?
Yes. Jupiter has a storm bigger than Earth that has raged for hundreds of years. Imagine complaining about drizzle there. Venus has clouds of sulphuric acid and surface heat hot enough to melt lead. Neptune has winds faster than 2,000 kilometres an hour, the fastest in the solar system. On some faraway planets, scientists think it might rain glass sideways, or even rain diamonds. Mars has dust storms that can cover the entire planet for weeks. Next time your picnic gets rained out, remember you could be on a planet where the rain is made of molten rock. Bring an umbrella anyway.
526. Can I hear the sun?
No sound crosses space, but scientists have turned the sun's vibrations into audio. It sounds like a very large, very hot hum. The sun's surface ripples constantly with sound waves bouncing around inside it, and if space had air, the sun would be incredibly loud, louder than a rock concert, even from Earth. Thankfully, space is silent (see question 501), and we enjoy the sun's light without its noise. Scientists sped up the recordings so human ears could hear them. The result sounds like a giant, cosmic fridge (see question 467). The sun is humming to itself. It's been humming for billions of years.
527. Why are planets round?
Gravity pulls everything evenly toward the middle, so big things end up round. Small things, like potatoes and asteroids, stay lumpy. Once something is big enough, its own gravity squeezes it into a ball, smoothing out the lumps like a giant cosmic rolling pin. Planets also spin, which makes them slightly fatter around the middle, like a person after Thanksgiving dinner. Earth is about 43 kilometres wider at the equator than from pole to pole. Some asteroids are shaped like peanuts, dog bones and snowmen. They're not big enough to be round, and they seem perfectly happy about it.
528. Do astronauts get homesick?
They say the best view of home is from space. They miss pizza, rain and real showers, in that order. Astronauts on the space station can video-call their families, send emails and even phone people from orbit, which is a very strange way to hear "so, what's new?" Many astronauts describe the "overview effect": seeing Earth as a small, fragile blue ball without borders changes how they think about everything. They also miss small things, like the smell of grass and the feeling of wind. When they get back, many spend their first day just standing outside in the rain. Then they eat pizza.
529. Can I make a wish on a satellite?
Plenty of "stars" moving across the sky are satellites. Your wish goes straight to the phone company. They'll put you on hold (see question 388). There are now thousands of satellites orbiting Earth, carrying TV, internet, weather forecasts and GPS signals, and on a clear night you can see them glide across the sky in steady lines. Some even travel in long trains, like a string of glowing pearls, which has caused many reports of UFOs. If you see a dot moving in a straight line without blinking, it's a satellite. If it's blinking, it's a plane. If it's zigzagging, call someone. Probably a scientist.
530. If I lived on Mars, how old would I be?
A Mars year is about 687 Earth days, so you'd be roughly half your Earth age. Instant youth. A 10-year-old would be about five on Mars, which means fewer birthdays, fewer cakes and, sadly, fewer presents. On Mercury, where a year is 88 days, you'd be more than four times older, and every year would pass so fast you'd barely finish the cake. On Neptune, a year lasts about 165 Earth years, so nobody born there would ever reach their first birthday. That's the saddest party in the solar system. Venus is weirder still: a day there is longer than its year. Look it up. It's real.
531. Is the moon following my car?
It's so far away it barely seems to move, so it looks like it's tagging along. It's not following you. It just likes the view. Nearby trees and houses zip past the window, while the moon, 384,000 kilometres away, seems to stay perfectly still. This is called parallax, and it makes every kid in a back seat believe the moon is their personal friend. People in every car in the world see the moon following them, which means the moon is following everybody at once. It's very busy. It never complains. It's the ultimate road-trip companion, and it never asks "are we there yet" (see question 450).
532. How do astronauts go to the bathroom?
With a toilet that uses suction instead of gravity. It's one of the most expensive toilets ever built, and it still comes with instructions. Astronauts have to train using a practice toilet on Earth with a camera underneath, to make sure their aim is correct. That's a real thing. On the space station, urine is recycled into clean drinking water, which astronauts say tastes fine. They call it "yesterday's coffee becoming today's coffee." When the space toilet breaks, it's an emergency. NASA has spare parts, repair manuals and a team on standby. Nobody becomes an astronaut for the toilet, but every astronaut respects it.
533. Can I see the Big Bang?
In a way. A faint microwave glow left over from it fills the universe, and a little of the static on old TVs came from it. Scientists call it the cosmic microwave background. It's the oldest light in the universe, about 13.8 billion years old, and it's everywhere, in every direction, like the universe's leftover baby photo. Two scientists discovered it by accident in the 1960s while trying to get rid of an annoying hiss in their antenna. At first they thought pigeon droppings were the cause, and they cleaned the antenna. The hiss stayed. It was the Big Bang, not the pigeons. They won a Nobel Prize.
534. Is Saturn wearing a hula hoop?
Several, made of ice and rock. It's the most stylish planet, and it knows it. Saturn's rings stretch hundreds of thousands of kilometres across but are often only about 10 metres thick, which makes them thinner, relative to their size, than a sheet of paper. They're made of billions of chunks of ice, some as small as sand and some as big as a house. Scientists think the rings may slowly disappear over the next few hundred million years, as the bits fall into the planet. So enjoy them now. Saturn's hula-hoop routine won't last forever. Neither will anyone's.
535. Would I be weightless on Jupiter?
The opposite. Its gravity is about two and a half times Earth's, and there's no solid ground to stand on. Not a vacation spot. Jupiter is a giant ball of gas, mostly hydrogen and helium, like a balloon the size of 1,300 Earths. If you tried to land, you'd sink through thicker and thicker clouds until the pressure crushed you into a pancake. Jupiter also has at least 95 moons, a giant storm (see question 525) and the strongest magnetic field of any planet. It's the boss of the solar system. Other planets give it space. Mostly because they have to.
536. Do comets have tails because they're animals?
Comets grow tails as the sun warms them and they shed gas and dust. They're cosmic ice cubes trailing their own puddles. A comet's tail always points away from the sun, pushed by solar wind, so sometimes the comet flies tail-first like a confused dog. Tails can stretch millions of kilometres long. Halley's Comet comes back every 75 to 76 years, which means most people see it once in their lifetime, if they're lucky and the clouds cooperate. It'll be back in 2061. Mark your calendar. Bring a lawn chair. Bring your grandchildren.
537. Can I take a selfie with a black hole?
You'd need a telescope the size of Earth. In 2019, scientists effectively built one by linking telescopes around the world and got the first picture. The black hole did not smile. The image showed a glowing orange ring around a dark centre, and people said it looked like a doughnut, a ring of fire and an angry eye from a fantasy movie. It took years of work and so much data that the hard drives had to be flown to computers by plane, because the internet was too slow. Your selfie with a black hole would come out blurry. Also, you'd get spaghettified (see question 520). Not a good look.
538. Is a light-year a year that's very light?
It's a distance: how far light travels in a year, about 9.5 trillion km. It's not a breezy year; it's a very long road. Light is the fastest thing in the universe, zooming at about 300,000 kilometres per second. It could circle Earth seven times in a single second. Even so, light from the nearest star beyond the sun takes over four years to reach us. That means when you look at stars, you're seeing them as they were long ago, like reading an old letter. Some of them may not even exist anymore. Stars are the universe's mail, always delivered late.
539. Why don't we feel the Earth spinning?
It spins smoothly and carries everything with it. You're on a huge, very quiet merry-go-round. At the equator, Earth's surface moves at about 1,670 kilometres an hour, faster than a passenger jet. Meanwhile, Earth orbits the sun at about 107,000 kilometres an hour, and the whole solar system zooms around the galaxy even faster. You're moving incredibly fast right now, while sitting on a couch. That's why you feel tired sometimes. It's not your fault. You've been travelling at enormous speed since the day you were born, and nobody even gave you a snack.
540. Do aliens watch our TV?
Our oldest broadcasts have only travelled about 100 light-years. If aliens are watching, they're very behind on the news. Radio signals spread out and get weaker as they travel, so by the time they reach far stars, they're faint whispers. If aliens could pick them up, they'd be watching old black-and-white shows, early radio comedy and game shows from decades ago. They'd think we all still wear hats and talk very fast. They'd have no idea what the internet is. Somewhere, an alien family might be watching a 1950s cooking show, trying to make a jelly salad. Pray for them.
541. Can I build a snowman on Mars?
Mars has frost and snow made partly of frozen carbon dioxide. Your snowman would be made of dry ice and extremely cool. Unfortunately, carbon dioxide snow on Mars falls as tiny, cube-shaped flakes that don't stick together like Earth snow, so it would be more of a snow pile than a snowman. You'd also be wearing a space suit with huge gloves, which makes rolling a snowball nearly impossible. Temperatures can drop below −120 °C at night. Your carrot nose would freeze solid instantly. Your snowman would look less like Frosty and more like a lump of disappointment. Still: first snowman on Mars. History.
542. How cold is space?
Deep space sits around −270 °C. Bring a jacket. Bring several. That's just a few degrees above absolute zero, the coldest anything can possibly get. But here's the twist: in direct sunlight, near Earth, things in space can heat up to over 100 °C. That's why the space station has to manage temperatures carefully, with radiators and insulation, swinging between baking and freezing every 45 minutes as it moves in and out of sunlight. Space is the worst thermostat in the universe. Your family argues about the thermostat at home. Imagine being an astronaut. The arguments are cosmic.
543. Do astronauts age more slowly?
Very slightly. After six months on the space station, they're a few milliseconds younger than they would be. Not enough to skip a birthday. This is because of Einstein's theory of relativity, which says time moves differently when you're moving very fast. Astronauts are travelling at 28,000 kilometres an hour, which slows their clocks a tiny bit. The GPS satellites in your phone (see question 529) have to correct for these time effects, or your map would be off by kilometres every day. So Einstein helps you find the nearest pizza place. He never got credit for that.
544. Is there life on other planets?
None found yet. If there is, it's probably microbes, and microbes do not care about you. Scientists are searching underground on Mars, in the oceans hidden under the icy shells of Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus, and in the atmospheres of faraway planets. Finding a single alien microbe would be one of the biggest discoveries in human history. It would also be very unexciting to look at: a tiny wiggly blob under a microscope. Newspapers would print "WE ARE NOT ALONE" over a picture of what looks like a speck of dust (see question 457). The microbe wouldn't even know it was famous.
545. Can I see another galaxy without a telescope?
Yes. On a dark night, the Andromeda Galaxy shows up as a faint smudge, 2.5 million light-years away and still making an appearance. The light you see from Andromeda left it before modern humans existed. It's the most distant thing you can see with your own eyes. Andromeda is also heading toward our galaxy, and in about 4.5 billion years, the two will crash together and merge into one big galaxy, which scientists have nicknamed "Milkomeda." Don't worry; stars are so far apart that they'll mostly miss each other. It'll be the slowest, gentlest crash in history. Like two shopping carts drifting together in a parking lot.
546. If the moon disappeared, would we notice?
Tides would shrink, nights would be darker, and every poet would be out of work. Werewolves would also be unemployed. The moon helps steady Earth's tilt, so without it, our seasons could become wobbly and unpredictable over long periods. Beaches would have much smaller tides, which would confuse crabs everywhere, including the crab in this book, who relies on tides for its schedule. Songs about the moon would make no sense. "Fly Me to the Moon" would become "Fly Me to Where the Moon Used to Be," which doesn't scan. Please don't let the moon disappear. We need it.
547. Do rockets have a reverse gear?
Some boosters now fly back down and land themselves upright, which is as close to reverse as space gets. Watching a rocket land tail-first on a tiny ship in the middle of the ocean looks like a movie played backwards, and it took years of practice. The early attempts ended in spectacular explosions, and the company made blooper videos of them. Reusing rockets saves huge amounts of money, since rockets used to be thrown away after one trip, like paper cups. Today a single booster can fly over 20 times. Your car can reverse into a parking spot. A rocket can reverse onto a boat. Show some respect.
548. Can I jump high enough to float off the Earth?
You'd need to hit about 11 km per second. Your best jump is a tiny fraction of that. Keep practising. That's called escape velocity, and it's about 40,000 kilometres per hour. The fastest human sprinters run about 44 kilometres per hour. A great jump lifts you about half a metre for about half a second. To escape Earth by jumping, you'd need legs about a million times stronger and a very good excuse for your neighbours. You'd also need a space suit, because the air would burn you up on the way. Rockets exist for a reason. Just jump on the moon instead (see question 509).
549. Is the universe infinite?
Nobody knows. It's at least extremely big, and your keys are somewhere in it. The part we can see, called the observable universe, is about 93 billion light-years across. Beyond that, light hasn't had time to reach us yet. The whole universe might go on forever, or it might be finite but without edges, like the surface of a ball. Either way, it's big enough to hold all the lost socks (see question 451), all the missing remotes (see question 465) and every pen that ever escaped a bank (see question 394). They're out there. Floating. Free at last.
550. Are we alone in the universe?
Not while there are geese. Linda would like that on the record. She submitted a formal statement to the panel, which read, in full, "HONK." Brent seconded it. The goose who declined to be named honked in a way that was interpreted as "we are many." Scientists are still searching the stars for intelligent life. Meanwhile, the geese believe intelligent life has already been found, and it's them. They have been watching humans from parking lots for decades, unimpressed. If aliens ever land, the geese will be there first, hissing at them. The aliens will leave. Nobody argues with a goose.