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Nasa revives 'weird life forms' trapped inside crystals for 60,000 years

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Nasa revives 'weird life forms' trapped inside crystals for 60,000 years

#41

Post by BjoernKW »

dEnigma wrote: post #7

Penelope Boston, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years exploring Mexico's Naica Mine in Chihuahua looking for extremophiles, which contain caves as large as cathedrals. Is it just because English isn't my first language, or does that sentence sound weird to native speakers too? Like the extremophiles contain "caves as large as cathedrals"

You're right. While understandable through context the sentence is ungrammatical because the relative clause is misplaced.

It should rather be "Looking for extremophiles Penelope Boston, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years exploring Mexico's Naica Mine in Chihuahua, which contains caves as large as cathedrals." and even then it's quite cumbersome to read because there are too many modifiers.

Sentences like that should simply be split up in order to avoid such problems and to be more comprehensible. Unfortunately, many writers seem to equate long sentences with sounding intelligent (speaking from personal experience here ... school and academia can teach you bad writing habits that take some time to unlearn).

Re: Nasa revives 'weird life forms' trapped inside crystals for 60,000 years

#42

Post by ChuckMcM »

Fascinating that the organisms can remain viable in geo-preservation mode. When growing up in Vegas we used to go swimming in some of the side canyons the lake had filled. And once while swimming we found some gypsum crystals that were like 1:100th scale models of the ones in the cave (I think the largest were about 5" long and maybe an inch in diameter.) we carried a couple of home and for a fairly long time they sat as table decorations. I never even imagined they could have something inside of them like that. Definitely solid horror movie material :-)

Re: Nasa revives 'weird life forms' trapped inside crystals for 60,000 years

#44

Post by PhasmaFelis »

blfr wrote: post #19
twic wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is the famous aphorism of Zal-Tar's Fence: > There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a crystal or jewel erected to contain an ancient being. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the danger this being poses; let us release it." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don’t s…

Zal-Tar's? It's Chesterton's fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence

It's been a while, but I don't recall Chesterton mentioning "a crystal or jewel erected to contain an ancient being".

Re: Nasa revives 'weird life forms' trapped inside crystals for 60,000 years

#45

Post by PhasmaFelis »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #18
dEnigma wrote: post #7

Penelope Boston, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years exploring Mexico's Naica Mine in Chihuahua looking for extremophiles, which contain caves as large as cathedrals. Is it just because English isn't my first language, or does that sentence sound weird to native speakers too? Like the extremophiles contain "caves as large as cathedrals"

Native speaker here. For what it's worth, I understood it perfectly. And so did you. It's not possible for extremophiles to contain caves, so obviously you know what they mean. Much of English is like this in informal conversation, and informal conversation is arguably the best way to write.

Native speaker also. The fact that it's possible to figure out a bit of writing does not mean that it's clear and well-written.

Re: Nasa revives 'weird life forms' trapped inside crystals for 60,000 years

#46

Post by twic »

blfr wrote: post #19
twic wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is the famous aphorism of Zal-Tar's Fence: > There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a crystal or jewel erected to contain an ancient being. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the danger this being poses; let us release it." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don’t s…

Zal-Tar's? It's Chesterton's fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence

That's the joke.

Re: Nasa revives 'weird life forms' trapped inside crystals for 60,000 years

#48

Post by GrinningFool »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #18
dEnigma wrote: post #7

Penelope Boston, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years exploring Mexico's Naica Mine in Chihuahua looking for extremophiles, which contain caves as large as cathedrals. Is it just because English isn't my first language, or does that sentence sound weird to native speakers too? Like the extremophiles contain "caves as large as cathedrals"

Native speaker here. For what it's worth, I understood it perfectly. And so did you. It's not possible for extremophiles to contain caves, so obviously you know what they mean. Much of English is like this in informal conversation, and informal conversation is arguably the best way to write.

Even in informal conversation, that's not really about ordering that you'll come across. I had to parse it a couple of times , and my first thought was that my contextually acquired definition of extremophiles from the comments and article was wrong in a really weird way. (Because of the word roots ).
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