I've been known to do a variation on that experiment when I have something at work that I don't want other folks to mess with. Toss $3-4 in bills on top and folks will act like it's taboo to even move the something (for fear of being accused of trying to steal the money).

Can we have them do it again, but with white, black, and reflective hats in the right places?

When it came up in a normal (well, "normal") episode of Doctor Who, I dubbed it "circular causality" and then later found it'd already been named as the "bootstrap paradox".

For me, it really depends on what backstory they're going with.

Original black and white T-Zone, or the newer, color series?

gmuslera linked to a good description of it below; it's a two-parter illusion.

Right after seeing it, I realized that the entire Balloon Boys plot could have been skipped, Walter could have just discovered physics funkiness in the first five or ten minutes of the show, and then the rest of the episode could have been concerned with Walter working out the Soul Magnet stuff and Olivia slowly…

It's hard to say. Normally, I'd think the odd look he was giving was concern about what the blueberry aliens may have been up to, but we -did- see earlier in that episode, him sending the two scientists off with a "Good job!" lie.

I'm not sure if I'd feel cheated or happy if the characters remembered forgetting about the droid, realized, "So, if we've never gassed it up, what is its power source?" and upon checking, finding out it has a bank of ZPMs or something in it.

RE: Surviving gates

Ah, but they built the plucky droid sidekick (that the found in the cargo bay?) of a prop (or virtual prop) and it hasn't appeared once since the initial finding, and then the following episode's "Let's let the droid fix things" mention.

Although this could be the "Eh, whoops. Looks like we have to wrap all this up" ending of the Chloe-alien plotline.

I have the book with the Spice Cookies; I can swear to it actually existing.

Would this be done by tossing a lot of mass towards Pluto, or blowing up a lot of the debris in its orbit?

Although if one checks through the .pdf of Traver's paper, examining folks -did- find little buggies (specifically, the dust mites in question, as well as other mini-critters) on her. Not oodles of them, but some.

And even mundanely. I mean, looking at the few comments here and on FaceBook's echo of this story, it's not uncommon for someone to grow a little itchy after reading about this.

I would propose that Travers' dust mites have developed the ability to transmit themselves via ethernet lines, in the 60-year span between then and now.

As a friend of mine once said, "Watching Cosmos is like going to church, for atheists".

Show of hands: Who made a "WHUMP!" sound with their mouth when they saw the picture that goes with this article?