Overnight, I spoke to a very excited Dr Arcanonn about a new discovery regarding the unknown artefacts and barnacles:

Yesterday I was contacted by CMDR Engalo, saying he’d observed an interaction between the UAs and barnacle ‘flowers’, the source of the meta-alloys.

Both of these have features we’ve nicknamed ‘fireflies’: bright specks of light that appear to move on their own over great distances, relative to their size.

Well, Engalo has observed that the fireflies from both appear to have an affinity for each other. If you place a UA near a barnacle, their two sets of fireflies start flying around together, until the UA is removed.

This is the first visual clue as to how or why meta-alloys might stop the damage caused by UAs – and I can’t thank CMDR Engalo enough for bringing it to my attention.

And with the new lab the community is helping us build right now, we’ll be hoping to observe this behaviour closely under controlled conditions.

CMDR Engalo also released a video showing this phenomenon in action – keep your eyes on the middle-right of the screen, around the ‘flower’:

The discovery has caused quite a stir among the scientists here at Thompson Dock, who are seeing the Palladium required to build this new lab pile up in the warehouses.

In particular, they’re hoping that it encourages the community to redouble its efforts on the mining operation to reach the 400,000 tonnes required to get the facilities they will need to build the best lab the bubble has ever seen.

Verity Gavroche