Friday August 15, 2003
Neutrinos

We're going to need your brainpower on this one. In fact we might have to fly in some world renowned scientists (WRS) to investigate it. (anyone have the number for WRS's?)

Last night, well actually this morning, at about 4am I was lying in bed, pretty much wide awake. Seems like the more exercise I get the less sleep I need, with the stolen sleep time trimmed from the morning. Yesterday I walked to work, biked home, moved rocks, dug dirt, and wrapped it up with an evening dog walk. Which means I need less sleep, see?

There I am, bored, mentally tossing, trying to trick myself into snoozing a bit longer. A few times I may have even slipped back into half-sleep. It's the type of sleep that doesn't even qualify for real dreams, just random fragments tossed in like the mind's own leftovers casserole.

It was during a lucid moment while considering getting up that the strangest of the strange happened. Let's first set the stage. The cat is on the bed, taking her chances down around leg level. Zeke is on the floor. He's had ear problems lately and I remember waking up at 2 to tell him to quit scratching. Both of them are sound asleep, as is Faith. The birds aren't up. It is completely and utterly quiet.

Then, at the exact same moment:
    the cat goes "meeooowwfff"
    the dog goes "ggrrrwwoooppphh"

It wasn't that the cat made a noise which triggered the dog or vice versa, it's that both of them made a strange dream sound at the same precise moment. No stirring afterwards, no twitching, no sniffing. It went back to complete silence again.

Dogcat Neutrino

Here's my theory. Tink and Zeke detected a neutrino. Scientists (WRS's at that) are quietly rowing sterile rowboats through heavy water filled mine shafts to replace gillion dollar neutrino sensors and here we've got a highly tuned neutrino sensing pair at the foot of our bed...shedding.

Please feel free to add your theory.


Dan Lyke • 2003-08-17 12:33am

Did you check the USGS pages to see about earthquakes? I'd figure small seismic activity (that we humans who are used to driving in cars and such discount) might be a common trigger.
Tedhieron • 2003-08-17 12:10pm

Earthquake theory seems plausible, but there didn't seem to be any around that time in this area:
(Hope the tabular formatting holds up here)
MAG DATE UTC-TIME LAT LON DEPTH LOCATION
y/m/d h:m:s deg deg km

5.1 2003/08/15 09:22:13 40.984 -125.596 3.7 120 km ( 75 mi) WNW of Humboldt Hill, CA
1.1 2003/08/15 08:53:58 38.797 -122.807 3.8 8 km ( 5 mi) WSW of Cobb, CA
1.2 2003/08/15 07:47:34 36.092 -117.858 4.9 23 km ( 14 mi) SE of Olancha, CA
1.9 2003/08/15 06:20:34 47.617 -121.760 12.3 11 km ( 7 mi) NE of Snoqualmie, WA
Tedhieron • 2003-08-17 12:13pm

Cosmic ray ricochet?