Mrs. Sippi’s Blog

This Yahoo page has an interesting answer regarding what is really at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Recently, the number of visitors to this site rose sharply, by several hundreds per day. What might be the cause of that?

Turns out that the exiting President of the United States, G.W. Bush, has declared the Mariana Trench area a monument.

A minute ago, information about the current issue of the journal Science dropped into my boss’s inbox. As expected, Science does comment on this new development, but you need to pay in order to access the article. I’ll ask my boss to buy it for me. I am kinda curious what it says.

I think it was mid November when I discovered that Bombay Sapphire gin is the favorite Christmas beverage of some English people. (My boss told me about it.)

The name - Bombay Sapphire gin - sounds fairytale-like to me and hints at a certain richness, conjures up images of treasure troves filled with oriental jewelry and an Aladdin’s lamp or two all placed on marvelous oriental carpets with deep burgundy colors and a touch of purple here and there.

It also raises questions. What is it made of? And do Bombay sapphires exist? I decided to investigate.

Want to know what I found? Follow me.

I just uploaded a new page. It is about a scientific paper published in 2003. From a scientific viewpoint, papers more than 5 years old are getting a bit “bearded”, so I am still just in time.

Here is the link to the new page about the Challenger Deep.

Please, do keep in mind that this is very likely to be only a temporary version. My boss was helping me today, but she really is not feeling that awake at the moment and her muscles are hurting a little bit too. Yep, she’s got the flu!

She is also lousy at drawing and that is why this all took so long. Then she suddenly had an idea: if you can’t draw, see if you can make a model and photograph that model. So last week, on her way back from an emergency vet visit, she purchased 4 slices of cake. A few days later, she bought a big chunk of Cheddar cheese.

Piece of cake!

My boss just created the illustrations for it. Finally! And they’re great.

My boss had a great idea this morning! There’ll be more here within about two weeks.

The other day, my boss heard a rumor that the Mariana Trench may not be the deepest trench on earth after all. I think she said it might be the Philippine Trench? I’ll get back to you about that, folks!

(She’s all wrapped up in a chemistry book right now, so I can’t ask her. Also been trying to get her to help me finish that Challenger Deep article!)

A lot of people ask me and my boss whether there is life at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The answer is: plenty!!!

My boss has never been that fascinated by the trench in itself, as she does not share many people’s fascination with things that are out of reach (such as astronomy!). She is too down to earth for that.

What caught her attention in the past was the news that fungi had been found on the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

More information about possible ongoing eruption in NE Lau Basin is available on my boss’s blog.

BBC started its new series “Oceans” on BBC 2 at 8pm on November 12. Repeated every Wednesday, eight times.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/oceans/

http://www.bbcshop.com/Science+Nature/Oceans-DVD/invt/bbcdvd2890