Through the Looking Glass, and What Zheludev et al. (2024) Found There

I found this to be a really interesting read throughout, and I'm fascinated by this discovery of Obelisks (apparently not yet confirmed or refuted after almost a year since that preprint). And it ended on such a funny note about how weird this microbiology stuff is when you zoom out:

> Like: Yeah, we found a virus. It’s in this tube. It looks like it’s water, but I promise, there’s viruses in there. How do you know? We extracted the virus’s vital essence and then ran it through a machine with some other vital essences we made for this purpose, and the machine said it was there. And this makes people sick? Well, we fed some of this water to a rabbit, and the rabbit got sick. Can I see the rabbit? No. You can’t go in the same room as the rabbit. Also, the rabbit died. Can I see the virus, then? No. It’s too small. Can YOU see it? Yeah, we took a picture. Can I take a picture myself? Probably not. Electron microscopy is really hard. Here, look at our photo, though. This is a gray blob. Yeah, we had to take the photo with electrons instead of with light, because the virus was really little and colors don’t exist that small. That cannot be right. Hey, we’re doing our best. Relax. Have a beer.