An hour ago, just after 7 am, the phone rang. Oh, shit, someone’s died, I thought, scrambling to follow Anne down the stairs. But before I had got to our bedroom door, she reappeared, smiling. It was Brussels Airport: they have found my lost luggage, mislaid returning from Macedonia last week. So after my shopping of the last few days, I now have an extra suit and many more pairs of socks and underwear than I needed. But I’m awake now, so here are a couple of random thoughts:

The rapid rotation of 2003 EL61

2003 EL61 is a newly discovered planetoid, not quite as big as was first thought but still pretty big. It spins pretty fast as well – its “day” is less than once every four hours. And apparently it is cigar-shaped.

I once read, long ago, an article by the then US Consul-General in Belfast, Michael Michaud, suggesting that we should be on the lookout for large alien artifacts in the Solar System. The obvious candidate for me was always Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 1, with its distant, unusually circular orbit and its unexplained periodical outbursts of gas; decrepit space station, perhaps?

One of these days I was going to write a hard sf short story about it. Now, just as astronomers are beginning to explain Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 1’s peculiar behaviour, I have another candidate for the starring inanimate role.

Fantasy Bed Time Hour

Two Valley Girls discuss Lord Foul’s Bane, in bed, four pages at a time here and also Tadhg O’Higgins here. I do wonder if it is still going? O’Higgins’ article was written in 2002, just after episode 5, and they only seem to be up to episode 28; but they’re on the TV schedules in Maine, Wisconsin and California, so I suppose it’s still going.