Hello! This is Everything Is Amazing, a romp through the sciences (and anything else that looks sufficiently credible and interesting) in search of a good, teeth-rattling “wow!”.

This iPhone photo taken by James Horton, PhD. certainly qualifies!

Except, no - it’s true I have James to thank here, but this picture is actually the work of Peder Mørk Mønsted, who definitely didn’t use an iPhone because he died in 1941.

Mønsted, a Danish painter of just the most staggering realistic landscape paintings I think I’ve ever seen, er - well, just, just how on earth did his eyes see so perfectly how the light, how the light, ghaghrlnarrg {*incoherent gibbering}.

HE PAINTED OVER A HUNDRED OF THESE okay, keep it together, Mike. Deep breaths. Deeper. Good man.

Anyway. How on earth? is what I’m saying here. Just that. How - on - earth.

Secondly, as a nice companion to the great scone pronunciation map of the UK I wrote about a while back, author Tom Cox, whose newsletter (formerly on Substack, now on Ghost) is wonderful and indescribable in equal measure, shared this a few days ago:

So if you’ve ever wondered if Britain really is so British, I can confirm that yes it absolutely is, and we’re really not sure what can be done about it at this point. Thanks for asking.

Lastly, and staying with Impressively Unhinged, a while back I contacted Anna Brones:

ME: Oh hey Anna, any chance I could get you know like a ‘testimonial’ from you about my newsletter or something like that to help with my marketing?

ANNA: yeah sure I have just the thing

*email arrives*

ME: uh…that wasn’t exactly what I…right. Okay then.

Thanks, Anna.

*stares at the wall for a while*

Anyway!

In a few days I’ll be sharing the results of my first attempts to get a good night’s sleep in the Scottish outdoors, as promised here - but for today’s main topic, we’re returning to the subject matter of a previous season: the bathymetric wonders hidden by our oceans.

Ever since I wrote about the ancient Zanclean megaflood, I’ve assumed nothing like it exists in today’s world. I mean, of course it doesn’t - surely we’d all notice the decidedly non-trivial matter of hundred of millions of cubic metres of water thundering about the place?

Today’s piece is about how wrong I was - and it starts on top of the tallest building in the world...