101 Places Not to See Before You Die - Catherine Price [33]
Dr. Bass’s original facility could only accommodate one person, and most of his corpses were unclaimed bodies obtained through the medical examiner’s office. But these days the farm is a three-acre complex with enough room for up to forty bodies at a time. If you’re interested in the full experience, the facility has even launched a donation program so that you can bequeath your corpse to the cause.
Crime shows like CSI have glamorized the field of forensic anthropology, but the reality of a body farm is, to put it bluntly, revolting. Tissues begin to release a green substance; lungs leak liquid through corpses’ mouths and noses. “Truly, this work is not for the faint of heart,” researchers at the University of Tennessee warn would-be forensic anthropologists. “Rotten smells, decomposing flesh, maggots, and body fluids are everyday occurrences, and you will be elbow deep in them.”
Unfortunately, they’re not being figurative.
Chapter 48
An AA Meeting When You’re Drunk
This is not one of the twelve steps.
Chapter 49
Jupiter’s Worst Moon
At ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit, the sun is a strong candidate for the worst vacation destination in space. So are black holes. Not only do they suck up and destroy everything around them, explained an astronomer whom I asked to select some of space’s worst spots, but they’ll tear you apart atom by atom—a process that sounds even worse when you realize that black holes can slow down time. We considered Venus (750 degrees Fahrenheit and surrounded by clouds of sulfuric acid); we thought about deep space (“great for those worried about a hectic itinerary”).
But the eventual winner was Io, one of Jupiter’s four main moons.
With a mottled surface covered in splotches of orange, yellow, red, and dark brown, Io is said to look like a pizza, but I think it more closely resembles a rotten orange. You could also skip all food analogies and compare Io directly to hell.
The most volcanic known object in the solar system, Io has over four hundred volcanoes, which spew sulfuric plumes up to 310 miles high. Its surface is covered with flowing lava and giant calderas. And yet, ironically, it’s also freezing: volcanoes are the only source of heat on a planet that routinely reaches –230 degrees Fahrenheit.
Io does offer fantastic views of Jupiter, but the beauty is offset by the fact that Io is bathed in sulfur dioxide, which would fill your last gasps with an overwhelming stench of rotten eggs. Io has no native water, but if its volcanic gases got into the liquid in your Nalgene, you’d be drinking sulfuric acid. And while Io’s low gravity would make it a hit with the kids, their enjoyment would be short-lived—nighttime temperatures are so cold that at the end of every forty-two-hour day, the atmosphere collapses.
Io and Jupiter
NASA
J. MAARTEN TROOST
Splitting the Czech
One morning in southern Turkey, in the vicinity of Bodrum and the sun-dappled waters of the Aegean Sea, I fell over a waterfall. I hadn’t intended to do this, of course. Nowhere on my itinerary did it say FALL OVER WATERFALL. Languid swims, yes. Edifying hikes up to the ruins of the ancients, sure. Fall over waterfall, no.
But fall over I did. I would like to think that in that terrifying moment when I lost my footing—that awful instant when I merged with a stream that rushed inexorably toward an unknown abyss—that time slowed down. Perhaps I had a moment to ruminate and ponder the admonitions of my guide. “Don’t climb up there,” he’d said moments earlier. “Last month, two men died climbing above the waterfall.” Where were they from, I’d asked. “They were Czech.” I’m only half Czech, I’d said. Ha ha. No problem.
Alas, I have no memory of my thoughts as I hurtled toward the lip of the falls. I’m told I screamed, so they were presumably not happy thoughts. And it’s no wonder, really. It’s endless all the ways water, rocks, and gravity can conspire to hurt you (three fractured vertebrae, shattered feet, concussion, lacerations, in my case). But since then, no