A bit late, but someone else has been thinking about your question -

Any word on who they figure was the Walrus?

It was the egg. It’s always the egg. That’s why the chicken never comes at all.

On Heinlein and writer’s collegiality - apparently (admittedly, according to Spider Robinson, who has an obsessive interest in Heinlein and never misses a chance to cast a positive light on the man and his works) he bought Philip Dick a typewriter once, when Dick was particularly down on his luck. Very different…

Morden’s written one fantasy novel as well - Arcanum. I thought it was pretty good. He doesn’t have a lot of novels out there but he does deliver - not flashy but thought-out.

And Adrian Tchaikovsky, Simon Morden, Andy Weir....

C’mon, then, get cracking. We’re all waiting.

Well, that might teach them something about celestial mechanics.

No TikTok videos with instructions for the appropriate dances and chants to drive off the celestial serpent that’s swallowing the Sun?

Preferably during an eclipse.

...the comments in that TikTok indicate many people were surprised...

Check this out - https://www.broadinstitute.org/technology-areas/what-mass-spectrometry

Especially as whatever made them could apparently stamp its footprints into solid rock.

Working on an ecology paper in the library as an undergraduate. I got up for some reason and came back to my carrel to find my non-biologist girlfriend convulsed with laughter after going through my papers - she’d come across a journal article entitled “Clutch Size of the Great Tit”.

How does 5G fit into all this?

Severian, journeyman of the Order of the Seekers of Truth and Penitence, late of Nessus, would like to know more about this “ultrablack coating”. His cloak’s getting a bit faded and tatty.

They were able to identify fatty acids in their experiment. That’s a bit more encouraging than just amino acids.

Don’t forget to take the lens cap off.

What does a fake fossil have to do with this discovery?

It has a pointed proboscis that it jabs into you. And its saliva breaks down proteins.