Starship Asterisk*

The object is probably the S-IVB third stage of the Apollo 12 Saturn V rocket (serial S-IVB-507).

Beyond wrote:Earth's Biggest Deep Earthquake Ever, Puzzles Seismologists.

Beyond wrote:
New shape-shifting metals discovered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape-shifting wrote:

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

<<In mythology, folklore, and modern fantasy fiction, shapeshifting is the ability of a being to physically transform into another form or being, either as an inherent faculty of a mythological creature, or by means of magic.

The concept is of great antiquity, and may indeed be a human cultural universal, present in the oldest forms of totemism or shamanism, it is present in the oldest extant literature and epic poems (such as the Gilgamesh Epic or the Iliad), where the shape-shifting is usually induced by the act of a deity; it persisted into the literature of the Middle Ages and the modern period (where the agency causing shape-shifting is mostly a sorcerer or witch), and it remains a common trope in modern fantasy, children's literature and works of pop culture.

By far the most common form of shape-shifting is therianthropy, the transformation of a human being into an animal (or conversely of an animal into human form). More rarely, the transformation may be into a plant or object, or into another human form (e.g. fair to ugly, or vice versa).

In many cases, imposed forms are punitive in nature. This may be a just punishment, the nature of the transformation matching the crime for which it occurs; in other cases, the form is unjustly imposed by an angry and powerful person. In fairy tales, such transformations are usually temporary, but they commonly appear as the resolution of myths (as in many of the Metamorphoses) or produce origin myths.

In Greek mythology, shapeshifting is often a punishment from the gods to the humans who crossed them:

• Zeus transformed Lycaon into a wolf (hence Lycanthropy) as a punishment for killing his children, in some versions of the myth.
  
  Athena transformed Arachne into a spider for challenging her as a weaver.
  
  Artemis transformed Actaeon into a stag for spying on her bathing, and was later devoured by his hunting dogs.
  
  Io was a priestess of Hera in Argos, a nymph who was raped by Zeus, who changed her into a heifer to escape detection. Her mistress Hera set ever-watchful Argus Panoptes to guard her, but Hermes was sent to distract the guardian and slay him. Heifer Io was loosed to roam the world, stung by a maddening gadfly sent by Hera, and wandered to Egypt, thus placing her descendant Belus in Egypt; his sons Cadmus and Danaus would thus "return" to mainland Greece.
  
  Circe transformed all intruders to her island into the form of beasts. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales, "she changes every human being into the brute, beast, or fowl whom he happens most to resemble." There have been numerous episodes in which the sorceress with her potions changed men and women into wild animals.
  
  In ancient Greece there was the incident of the dog's theft of gold, guardian of a temple of Zeus is located in Crete. In this myth, the architect of the theft was actually Pandareus, who gave the boy with the commitment that it hid the divine eyes. Hermes came with the clear intent to recover the sacred animal, but Tantalus swore falsely. The huge dog was Rhea, a female Titan, transformed by the god Hephaestus.
  
  In Norse mythology, Odin transformed Svipdag into a dragon because Svipdag had angered him.>>

Beyond wrote:
#1729 . . . Why is it hidden in Futurama episodes?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24459279

http://oeis.org/search?q=1729&language=english&go=Search wrote:
A001235: Taxi-cab numbers: sums of 2 cubes in more than 1 way.

1729, 4104, 13832, 20683, 32832, 39312, 40033, 46683, 64232, 65728, 110656, 110808, 134379, 149389, 165464, 171288, 195841, 216027, 216125, 262656, 314496, 320264, 327763, 373464, 402597, 439101, 443889, 513000, 513856, 515375, 525824, 558441, 593047, 684019, 704977

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIL-4104 wrote:

4104 = 16³ + 2³ = 15³ + 9³.

<<The ZIL-4104 was a limousine built from the late 1970s to the late 1980s, when it served as the transport of the elite of the Soviet Union. It is estimated that no more than fifty cars were produced each year.

The ZIL-4104 was an update of the ZIL-114 with which it shared the same chassis. There was considerable restyling and the car was rather more streamlined than the 114, notably in the rear vision mirrors which in the 114 were of a very old style. The rear window, however, became less curved and more boxy in accordance with then-prevalent European practice. Despite sharing the same chassis, the ZIL-4104 was still as much as 200 kg (441 lb) heavier than the 114.>>

Carmichael numbers: composite numbers n such that a^(n-1) = 1 (mod n) for every a coprime to n.

561, 1105, 1729, 2465, 2821, 6601, 8911, 10585, 15841, 29341, 41041, 46657, 52633, 62745, 63973, 75361, 101101, 115921, 126217, 162401, 172081, 188461, 252601, 278545, 294409, 314821, 334153, 340561, 399001, 410041, 449065, 488881, 512461

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Daniel_Carmichael wrote:
<<Robert Daniel Carmichael (March 1, 1879 – May 2, 1967) was an American mathematician born in Goodwater, Alabama. Carmichael completed the requirements for his Ph.D. in mathematics at Princeton University in 1911. Carmichael's Ph.D. research in mathematics was done under the guidance of the noted American mathematician G. David Birkhoff, and it is considered to be the first significant American contribution to the knowledge of differential equations in mathematics. Carmichael next taught at Indiana University where he was involved with special theory of relativity. He moved on to the University of Illinois, where he remained from 1915 until his retirement in 1947.

Carmichael is known for his research in what are now called the Carmichael numbers (a subset of Fermat pseudoprimes, numbers satisfying properties of primes described by Fermat's Little Theorem although they are not primes). He found the smallest Carmichael number, 561, and over 50 years later, it was proven that there are infinitely many of them.>>

Pseudoprimes to base 2 (a.k.a., Sarrus numbers):

341, 561, 645, 1105, 1387, 1729, 1905, 2047, 2465, 2701, 2821, 3277, 4033, 4369, 4371, 4681, 5461, 6601, 7957, 8321, 8481, 8911, 10261, 10585, 11305, 12801, 13741, 13747, 13981, 14491, 15709, 15841, 16705, 18705, 18721, 19951, 23001, 23377, 25761, 29341

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Sarrus wrote:
<<Pierre Frédéric Sarrus (10 March 1798, Saint-Affrique – 20 November 1861) was a professor at the University of Strasbourg, France (1826-1856) and member of the French Academy of Sciences in Paris (1842). He discovered a mnemonic rule for solving the determinant of a 3-by-3 matrix, named Sarrus' scheme, which provides an easy-to-remember method of working out the determinant of a 3-by-3 matrix (as illustrated in "cross product"). Sarrus also demonstrated the fundamental lemma of the calculus of variations.

Sarrus numbers are pseudoprimes to base 2. Sarrus also developed the Sarrus linkage, the first linkage capable of transforming rotary motion into perfect straight-line motion, and vice versa.>>

Beyond wrote:The Universe is Really a Hologram

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... -is-a-holo