Blue Devil Fish, by Pliny the Elder

Greetings from Pliny the Elder.

There has been much in the newspapers recently about Blue Devil Fish, that hide in caves along the underwater reefs off the coast of Adelaide. These fish, they say, are most mysterious. In colour they are the darkest midnight blue, and their bodies are spotted with pale blue spots as numerous as the stars in the Milky Way.

Each fish has a distinctive pattern of spots by which it may be recognised, and divers have made numerous field trips to local reefs to photograph the fish, that they might make a study of their habits, and the size of their populations.

A study of the earbones of the Blue Devil Fish has shown that they can live to be as old as fifty nine. It makes me melancholy to think that I may be outlived by a fish. For I remain forever fifty seven. Not that it holds me back in many ways. But I will never qualify for free travel on the bus or train.

And therefore, should I wish to join the divers in their study of the Blue Devil Fish, for example by catching the train to Port Noarlunga and joining with them there, I cannot, unless I am willing to part with more money than I can spare. For the cost of bus and train tickets is close to four dollars nowadays, and that is four dollars each way, because it is not possible to walk to the beach from the station, swim out to the reef and back and return to the station in under two hours.

Furthermore, I believe the line is temporarily closed while it is being upgraded.

Blue Devil Fish, I should add, are not edible fish.

Tomorrow I shall be writing on chocolate biscuits. Farewell!

Cosmic Rays and Neutralinos

Pliny and Nostradamus went to a lecture on Tuesday evening, on the subject of cosmic rays. They were astonished to see that the lecture theatre was almost full.

There were three empty seats in the third row between two men. Nostradamus took the middle one, and Pliny sat down next to a redfaced man in a sand coloured coat. The man was talking to two of his friends who were sitting in the row behind him. I felt terrible, he was saying, but I feel a lot better now. We picked the wrong two seats, thought Pliny.

The lecture was not too difficult to understand. There were oval maps of the universe on 2 big screens with the hot spots picked out in red, ringed with yellow. In Argentina, at the Pierre Auger Observatory, they observe rare cosmic rays containing ultra high energy particles of 10 million trillion electron volts. These are so rare they only hit the earth at a rate of about one per week per square kilometre. The red hot spots on the cosmic map were where these particles were coming from, somewhere beyond the Milky Way. Pliny wondered if they were dangerous.

Half way through the lecture the red faced man began to cough. I knew it, thought Pliny.

At question time, nobody asked if the ultra high energy particles were dangerous.

Everyone stood up to leave. The man in the sandcoloured jacket was asked by his friends how he liked it. I kept up, he answered jovially. Then he added, Did you know that every second millions of neutralinos are passing through our bodies, and we aren't aware of them? We're all full of holes, he laughed.

I know! thought Pliny.