Saturday, August 11, 2012

This looks like a job for Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA)!

A 250-by-30 mile rockberg of pumice has been spotted bobbing about mostly awash in the south Pacific.

The peripatetic floating quasi-island is larger than the state of Rhode Island by a healthy margin, and is therefore roomy enough to accommodate at least eight thousand members of USPACOM and their family members, although that many troops could create a risk of the island capsizing and sinking.

20 comments:

perlhaqr said...

I was going to suggest moving Congress, The President (and various "serious" candidates for the office), and the Supreme Court to it.

Ish said...

There is no way this doesn;t involve Cthulhu.

Kevin said...

perl beat me to it. I vote we put both Houses of Congress on it and hope they all stand on one side.

hooper said...

Of course they'll all stand to one side. The Dems would race to see who can stand farthest left, and the Reps would chase after them because the other side feels ... so ... lonely.

BobG said...

I blame Bush.

Anonymous said...

There was a program some time back about monster tidal waves caused by land slides around the pacific rim. Seems the main island which houses the Pearls Harbor Naval Base has a habit of splitting in to two pieces at the volcanic fault lines which run the lenghth of the island. Waves of monster size wiped the coast of Austriala and the West Coast of the U.S. about 180,000 years ago and it could be ready to do it again. Just Saying......

Canthros said...

Lava Soap could not comment on account of being too busy making flags and chartering an exploratory expedition.

John Hardin said...

Sadly it's not an island but rather a huge area of pieces of pumice that apparently floated to the surface from an underwater volcanic eruption.

A 10,000-square-mile floating island would be so cool!

MikeG said...

Does anybody know where we can buy a million tons of epoxy resin? we could make a life size model of a tropical island and tow it anywhere.

Tirno said...

A better question: who has the technology to create large volumes of structurally rigid artificial pumice? If you could input waste rock and energy and output a 10m x 10m x 10m shape that has 80% the density of an equivalent volume of water and can be submerged to a depth of 100m so you can stack them, and you can lock them together rigidly, you might as well call yourself Magrathean Industries and start building luxury island resorts.

Or deep ocean fisheries or deep sea mining support platforms or... or... Hold on, I'm sure I can delve into my piles of sci-fi to come up with more. Equatorial space ports, perhaps?

Tam said...

Hey, you, get off of my cloud!

Kristophr said...

Pretty cool stuff.

Here are some photos from a yacht sailing through a similar patch near a new island erupting in the Tonga chain:

http://setsail.com/tongan-volcano-adventure/

Anonymous said...

I blame Bush.

RabidAlien said...

Dangit, Tam, now I've got that song running through my head...

John A said...

Can I claim it as wreckage and register it as a yacht?

global village idiot said...

Nah. It's Chick Fil-A's fault this time.

gvi

Anonymous said...

Giligan's Island?
Wait, no lagoon.
Nevermmind.

Rich in NC

Temnota said...

Clarke wrote a short story years ago about an attempt to ground an artificial iceberg on Miami Beach, I wonder...

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

Best comment on that article: "It's debris left over from Madonna prepping for her concert tour."

I could believe that.

Woodman said...

Hunh, I couldn't actually get the sense that it was pieces of pumice. I guess that makes it a lot less incredible. The statement 10,000 square mile "raft" to me indicates a single object. I guess it's time to read Jingo again.

I love the fact that the images attached to the article might as well be of the wall of my cubical.

"Royal New Zealand Air Force ship" I know the Army has more boats than the Navy, and the Navy has more planes than the Air Force, but really? Air Force Ship?