We take geocaching for granted now.
But leading up to this, it’s worth considering what has happened since our early dawn to allow us to locate stuff to a 2m accuracy, anywhere on our planet, using just a mobile phone.
Our ‘Electric Light Bulb’ moment, so to speak, was the electric light bulb.
Hey this electricity light stuff sure beats burning candles or gas.
Woh! – You can even use this to make magnets - and motors!
And you can use the same stuff generate electromagnetic radiation to transmit information – let’s modulate that and call it Radio – Oh! and TV.
This Silicon and Germanium stuff does weird things when you mess with it – mix in some quantum mechanics and, hey presto, we’ve got a whole semiconductor industry churning out, first single transistors, then complete computer chips.
I hear the Russians managed to put Sputnik, the first man made satellite into orbit (the only previous earth satellite is still called ‘The Moon’).
Launching stuff into earth orbit is easy now, what if we could hang a few satellites into orbits that were so far away, they would orbit at the same rate the earth spins? - Woh! A geo stationary communications network is born.
What if we strung a necklace of low earth orbit satellites up there; if we were to measure the time a message took to arrive, we could work out where we were anywhere on the planet surface.
That’s a great idea, but what should we do now? – Hey, let’s make some neat mobile phones and go geocaching.
But before all this, and even the light bulb, folk were still able to work out which way to go using the stars.
It must have been puzzling for the Flat Earthers of the day to wonder why all that twinkly stuff in the night sky seemed to spin around and around. But they worked out that whatever day of the year and time of night it was and wherever the stars actually were, one point in the sky stayed fairly static.
Handily for the ancient mariners of the northern hemisphere, this static point in the sky was marked by a star which was named Polaris. It’s not always been so, as this point itself tracks a circle once every 26,700 years so in 13,000 years’ time, Vega will mark this spot as it did some 13,000 years previously.
But who knows what the night sky will look like on into the future as we sit here spinning round a planet, spinning round a sun, on the outer edges of a barred spiral star cluster which rotates about once every 240,000000 years. And this local star cluster is part of a group of galaxies which is itself part of a super cluster of galaxies also in spin – and gravity drives all this (I wish we understood this).
Something to ponder as you visit this cache.
There’s a few technical tips which might help your quest:
- You’ll need a pen.
- Keep the cache container level while you are trying to unlock it. Try to find a convenient flat place on the ground.
- Keep it away from ferromagnetic metal, GPS units, smart phones and magnetic compasses.
- It has a tremble switch to wake it up. It’s fairly sensitive but needs to be GENTLY wobbled for about 1s - you’ll know when it’s awake, it will beep and start flashing. Getting it out of the main container should be enough.
- If nothing seems to wake it up, the battery has probably gone flat. Let me know. Please don’t force it.
- If you solve the puzzle, the container will unlock (and let you know by continuous beeping). Time to slide the lid open.
- Please don’t place anything ferromagnetic in the cache – it will change the local magnetic flux and perhaps stop the unit opening.
- When you close the lid, it will auto lock and then be inactive for a minute to allow you to put it back in its container. It will beep when it is re-activated.
- If it doesn't auto lock when you close the lid, please check the lid is the right way round so the hole matches up with the bolt.
FTF glory goes to FamousEccles who found this cache some 28 minutes after publication - that must be some sort of record.