A clock for the millennia

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, is investing in a colossal 10,000-year clock housed inside a West Texas mountain, costing $42 million. The 500 feet (152 metres) clock, once completed, aims to endure for millennia, powered by Earth’s thermal cycles and sunlight.

It is designed to require minimal maintenance and will be powered by mechanical energy harvested from sunlight and the people who visit it. The clock will feature astronomic and calendric displays, along with a chime generator capable of producing over 3.5 million unique bell chime sequences — one for every day the clock is visited over the next 10,000 years.

The website raises a thought-provoking question: “Why would anyone build a clock inside a mountain with the hope that it will ring for 10,000 years?”

The answer lies in encouraging people to contemplate generational-scale questions and projects. The clock serves as a symbol, urging us to consider what kind of civilisation we want to pass on for the next ten millennia.

Going bananas over banana hammers

Iron Factory Ikeda, a typical precision metal manufacturing plant in Hiroshima, Japan, started making banana-shaped mallets in 2019 and followed it up with steel banana hammers a year later. Over the years, variations of the wacky product were developed.

Recently, the banana hammers went viral online and sparked newfound interest among consumers not only in Japan, but also worldwide. The exact purpose of banana hammers — apart from novelty gifts — remains unknown, but according to Iron Factory Ikeda, they satisfy people’s desire to hammer nails using fruits, plus, they also make great paperweights.

Unusual lobster caught in Maine

An unusual lobster has been caught in Maine — it’s half red and half blue, as well as half male and half female. The lobster was dubbed the crustacean Bowie in honour of musician David Bowie’s famously androgynous style and mismatched eye colours.

New England Aquarium biologist Jordan Baker said only about one in 50 million lobsters share Bowie’s bicoloured appearance.

“There are these embryo mutations or changes in that ontogenetic development,” Baker said. “The combination of embryos or division that basically make two different animals.”

Bowie is currently being kept in a cage in the ocean and may be donated to the aquarium, which is already home to multiple lobsters of unusual colours.

Six-year-old girl solves Rubik’s cube in six seconds

Six-year-old Cao Qixian set the new women’s world record for solving a 3x3x3 Rubik’s cube in 5.97 seconds (average) at the World Cube Association Rubik’s Cube International Open in Singapore.

Qixian, from China’s Jiangsu Province, started playing with a Rubik’s cube when she was only three, inspired by a cousin who taught her the art of ‘speed-cubing’, solving the world-famous puzzle as quickly as possible. A year later, her parents got her a speed-cubing coach.

She enjoyed speed-solving the Rubik’s cube so much that she practiced for two to three hours every day, and her time just got better and better.

Published in Dawn, Young World, December 30th, 2023