Episode #080: Impossiblocks

GMA of LateNite fame joins us in the Tangent Cube for the 2019 inaugural episode, bringing his engineering expertise to the subject of impossiblocks, and also recounts a snake expedition he took into the mountainous wilderness of New York State to look for an ancient serpent effigy aligned to the constellation of Draco.  LOTS of pics for this show!    Aurora Borealis by Alexander Kuznetsov via spaceweather.com   "Serpent Effigy" boulders and dry-laid walls on Overlook Mountain, NY                       Museum of the American Indian. Obsidian Mirror is the black circle on the upper right   Demonstrating the reflectivity of the mirror Granite-carved object, said to be a "yoke" of some kind     Note the difference in quality between the sculpture and the "yoke" 'Em'r ducks From Lovelock Cave         Overhead map of the Serapeum, with Serapeum Box locations marked and numbered     Serapeum Entrance       One of the Serapeum boxes   Serapeum box with "relative size people"     Rough hewn box still in the tunnel. Not much room to get hundreds of slaves and ropes around that thing     Christopher Dunn, measuring precision inside one of the boxes     Precision between box and lid     The infamous "Core #7", note the feed rate lines circling the core   Feed rate lines inside a core bore   Another core bore with visible feed marks     Zoom in on this image to see the incredibly thin core drill width that is being pointed out     More evidence of advanced Computer Numerical Control(CNC) machining on Giza     ...and still more evidence      "Ramses II"(if that's who this really is) colossal statue facial symmetry      Facial symmetry evidence of tool diameter symmetry      Tool diameter symmetry in the z axis      Giza plateau basalt sheathing slabs      Flat basalt slabs cut to fit eroded limestone below     Basalt sheathing     Ba'albek Trilithon - The three blocks marked in red. Note relative size people on the ground below     Ba'albek Trilithon - the weights listed are way on the low end of possibility. These blocks are probably closer to 1100-1200 tons     More impossiblocks at Ba'albek     "Stone of the Pregnant Woman" in the Ba'albek quarry, 1 kilometer from the site. Until recently was the largest known cut stone ever made     Stone of the Pregnant Woman, relative size people     Another perspective on the Stone of the Pregnant Woman     The EVEN LARGER blocks found below the Stone of the Pregnant Woman     Another enormous cut stone, partway between the quarry and the site     Someone was MOVING this block through the mountains, when they suddenly dropped it, left, and never returned. It has not moved since