Bus took us to board the American Cruise Line Melody. their newest on the Mississippi.   Watch this 11 min 23 sec video to get a full tour of the boat.   In general: While ships are designed for open, deep-sea navigation, boats are for smaller inland, river or coastal waters. Remember U-boat during the world war, for the German Unterseeboot?  Stands for undersea boat.  So yes, a submarine is a boat. A very large yacht is still a boat. The Melody was actually launched in 2021, measures 269 feet long and 56 feet wide, and is a boat.   Holds up to 180 passengers and has four decks.  Known for large staterooms, with standard rooms of 250 square feet.  The fourth floor has suites, and our room 418 has 405 square feet.   You can read the details here. It is nearly 400 miles from Memphis to New Orleans.  Maybe a 6-hour drive,  Our itinerary, which will take 13 days, or 12 nights, to complete    Frankly, I am surp...

You by now must know that GOAT is the Greatest Of All Time.  But  BOAT:  The Brightest of All Time ? Last October telescopes spotted a gamma ray burst, which is caused by the collapse of a black hole.  These also occur when two black holes or neutron stars collide.  This phenomenon is focused along a narrow beam.  If you happen to be in the path, you could be in trouble. One of Humanity's most serious possible extinction evenf could well be a gamma ray burst. However, Planet Earth is so far away from such things that astronomers don't much worry about that, especially as the odds of this beam heading exactly our way are very low. Yet, astronomers detect about a burst a day, and these are only the ones heading in our general direction, which is a small percentage of all GRBs in the Universe. The calculation is that an extinction GRB happens once every five million years, but not on here. Possibly, a GRB with this potential could have occurred about 450 milli...