UKC

In 1986, Nature magazine published a letter from a hospital genetics dept:

https://picasaweb.google.com/101939326898768169409/20140227

This isn't a spoof - I dug the original paper copy of the magazine out of the library archive; the link above is my scan of it. The writers of the letter are legit, and the letter is referenced in Pubmed:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3762679

So.... what is that thing? It certainly looks like a manufactured as opposed to a natural structure.

(BTW, amniocentesis is the process of extracting fluid from around an embryo. It's used to test for genetic conditions, e.g Downs).

I'm off to the bunker to wait for the alien apocalypse. Talk amongst yourselves.

In reply to Tony Naylor:

No idea, but it looks cool...

Miscalculation in scale as per Douglas Adams, where the alien war fleet gets eaten by a dog?

BC

In reply to Tony Naylor:

Sadly, a boringly plausible explanation was suggested a year later...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3808028?report=abstract

Click on the 'Nature' box top right. For some reason I can't include the address of the actual page.

In reply to Dave Garnett:

logged in at work? It's paywalled. I can't see it without a uni log in

Care to summarise, or was it really God stuck on 14 across

In reply to Dave Garnett:
I haven't got a Nature account. Any chance you could copy the text into here, please? Or summarise, if that's not legal.

In reply to Tony Naylor:

It says that such artefacts are not uncommon and perhaps 5% of the population show signs of cybernetic improvement, presumably as a result of intervention by another species, although it's not clear how recently in evolutionary history this occurred.

In reply to Dave Garnett:


Surely everyone remembers their first probing?

In reply to Dave Garnett:

What does it actually represent? I've done loads of spreads (hypotonic KCl followed by acetic acid methanol 1:3 fixation) and never seen something like this. Curious.

In reply to toad and Tony Naylor:
No, not really. It says that it's probably a bit of polymethylmethacrylate mask from chip manufacture. Normally this is dissolved completely after etching but sometimes a bit comes off and floats off in the dust and could end up anywhere. The blank black squares are caused by random air bubbles in some of the holes (which are originally created by positive relief electron beam lithography (a well-known Vogon technology).

In reply to Dave Garnett:

I like your first answer better. Science is so boring

In reply to Dave Garnett:
Cheers, Dave, much appreciated. Still a bit put out by the lack of alien apocalypse, though

In reply to Dave Garnett:

Nonsense - clearly the intracellular parasite Sausolinc phagopacbotus has infected the dividing cell.

In reply to Tony Naylor:

Surely any sensible person would just think they had some crap on the slide and would prep a new one.

In reply to gethin_allen:

Sure; some alien nanotech crap though.