Weird Universe Archive

March 2024

March 6, 2024

Are we swallowing other universes?

An unusual cosmological hypothesis was recently published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. At least, it's an idea I haven't heard before.

It suggests that our universe has been swallowing "baby universes," and that this eating habit is the cause of the observed accelerating rate of expansion of our universe.



The article, authored by researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute and the Tokyo Institute of Technology, quickly veers off into mathematics that's incomprehensible to me. But I can extract a few interesting ideas. For instance, what if the initial "Big Bang" of our universe was caused by us (when we were still a baby universe) being swallowed by a larger universe?

the fact that the universe has expanded from, say, a Planckian size to 10−5m in a very short time, invites the suggestion that this expansion was caused by a collision with a larger universe, i.e. that it was really our Universe which was absorbed in another "parent" universe.

And what would happen if, now that we're an adult universe, we collided with another adult universe? The researchers don't answer this question, but I'm guessing the outcome wouldn't be good.

While a continuous absorption of microscopic baby universes probably can be accommodated in a non-disruptive way in our Universe, it is less clear what happens if the "baby" universe is not small, since we have not suggested an actual mechanism for such absorption.

More info: "Is the present acceleration of the Universe caused by merging with other universes?"

Posted By: Alex - Wed Mar 06, 2024 - Comments (3)
Category: Science, Spaceflight, Astronautics, and Astronomy, Weird Theory

March 5, 2024

Husbands too like Premarin

Make your wife pleasant again with Premarin!

The physician who puts a woman on "Premarin" when she is suffering in the menopause usually makes her pleasant to live with once again. It is no easy thing for a man to take the stings and barbs of business life, then to come home to the turmoil of a woman "going through the change of life." If she is not on "Premarin," that is.

By the 1990s, Premarin had become the most frequently prescribed medication in the United States. Now, according to Wikipedia, it's down to number 283.

The word 'Premarin' is a portmanteau of PREgnant MAre uRINe.



JAMA - Aug 16, 1958

Posted By: Alex - Tue Mar 05, 2024 - Comments (1)
Category: Medicine, Advertising, Husbands, Wives, 1950s

Anne Carroll Moore and her Doll Nicholas

The famous children's librarian Anne Carroll Moore was wont to tote around a doll named Nicholas and make people interact with it.



She eventually wrote a whole book (300+ pages) about Nicholas: Nicholas: A Manhattan Christmas Story.

You can read the book here.

I have tried in vain to find a real photo of Nicholas. However, here is his depiction from the book.



Posted By: Paul - Tue Mar 05, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Books, Libraries, 1920s, Dolls and Stuffed Animals, Mental Health and Insanity

March 4, 2024

Death in Nutty Putty Cave

Until I saw it posted on the TYWKIWDBI blog a few days ago, I had never heard of John Jones's Nov 2009 death in Nutty Putty Cave. Since then I've learned that it's well known in many corners of the Internet. Still, if it was new to me, it'll probably be new to a lot of WUvies as well. And it certainly qualifies as a weird and disturbing death.

The illustration below (which comes from the video below that) shows the position in which Jones was trapped for 27 hours before his death.

Jones's body remains there to this day because rescuers were unable to get him out. The cave has been sealed shut.

More info: caves.org (pdf - scroll to page 15), cavehaven.com



Posted By: Alex - Mon Mar 04, 2024 - Comments (3)
Category: Death, 2010s

Environments 3

Join the Be-In with the embedded player below. Then experience bucolic raptures.











Posted By: Paul - Mon Mar 04, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Hillbillies, Country Bumpkins, Ruralism and Flyover Country, Parades and Festivals, Vinyl Albums and Other Media Recordings, 1960s, 1970s

March 3, 2024

Norma and Normman

In the summer of 1945, the Cleveland Health Museum put a statue of "Norma" on display. Norma was said to be the "norm or average American woman of 18 to 20 years of age." Accompanying her was a statue of Normman, her equally average brother. The two statues had been sculpted by Abram Belskie, based on data gathered by Dr. Robert L. Dickinson.

The statues were celebrated at the time but seem like oddities now because a) their idea of 'average' didn't include any minorities, and b) they seem to represent a mid-20th-century obsession with being average or normal.

As the saying goes, the real weirdos are those who think they're normal.





Natural History magazine - June 1945



More details from The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World that Values Sameness by Todd Rose:

The Cleveland Plain Dealer announced on its front page a contest co-sponsored with the Cleveland Health Museum and in association with the Academy of Medicine of Cleveland, the School of Medicine and the Cleveland Board of Education. Winners of the contest would get $100, $50 and $25 war bonds, and 10 additional lucky women would get $10 worth of war stamps. The contest? To submit body dimensions that most closely matched the typical woman, "Norma," as represented by a statue on display at the Cleveland Health Museum. . .

In addition to displaying the sculpture, the Cleveland Health Museum began selling miniature reproductions of Norma, promoting her as the "Ideal Girl," launching a Norma craze. A notable physical anthropologist argued that Norma's physique was "a kind of perfection of bodily form," artists proclaimed her beauty an "excellent standard" and physical education instructors used her as a model for how young women should look, suggesting exercise based on a student's deviation from the ideal. A preacher even gave a sermon on her presumably normal religious beliefs. By the time the craze had peaked, Norma was featured in Time magazine, in newspaper cartoons, and on an episode of a CBS documentary series, This American Look, where her dimensions were read aloud so the audience could find out if they, too, had a normal body.

On Nov. 23, 1945, the Plain Dealer announced its winner, a slim brunette theatre cashier named Martha Skidmore. The newspaper reported that Skidmore liked to dance, swim and bowl — in other words, that her tastes were as pleasingly normal as her figure, which was held up as the paragon of the female form.

Martha Skidmore, "Norma" Contest Winner. Cleveland Plain Dealer - Sep 23, 1945

Posted By: Alex - Sun Mar 03, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Statues and Monuments, 1940s

March 2, 2024

Falsies on Freeway

Falsies, or miniature Kendall paracones?

Los Angeles Times - Oct 26, 1954



Rushville Republican - Oct 26, 1954

Posted By: Alex - Sat Mar 02, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Transportation, 1950s

Special Driver Gloves for Signalling

Full patent here.



Posted By: Paul - Sat Mar 02, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Inventions, Patents, Signage, 1920s, Cars

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Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction books such as Elephants on Acid.

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Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.

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