Cryobot Day

Long, busy day. I stepped on a small Burger King bobblehead too. No damage to the bobblehead, since I missed the head itself, and only slight pain for me. But where did it come from? I haven't visited a Burger King in a while, and as mascots go, he's one of my least favorites, so I wouldn't have picked it up elsewhere. I suspect small hands brought it here somehow.

But at least I had the satisfaction of writing about cryobots today, in a short squib for a magazine client of mine. It wasn't anything I knew about before -- a probe that penetrates serious ice by using heating elements in its nose, or jets of hot water.

By serious ice, I mean the sort that Antarctica has on top of a feature called Lake Ellsworth, a subglacial lake. In a couple of years, scientists will be melting a small hole down to that lake, to found out what they can find out. Lake Vostok is a more famous stygian pool, but Ellsworth's probably just as interesting. Cryobots may one day go to the Jovian moon Europa as well. All I can say about that is I hope to live long enough to hear about it.