Reader , I ’m sure you came to Earther have a bun in the oven news of the close at hand climate apocalypse just as I waken up today expecting to write about it . But instead we ’ve both improbably come here , at a web log where I am about to excuse that Cats is , in fact , a documentary . Or at least there ’s one thing that ’s not totally made up in it .

I must tender a disclaimer about what you are about to take : I have not seen Cats . To be bonnie , I require to see Cats ( ideally thenon - patched version ) , but I ’ve been a bit busybodied with the holidays and whatnot . But I have readAlex Cranz ’s io9 reviewof the original and patched movie describe it “ like a corpse flower … perfectly awful but dead captivating ” as well as the Wikipedia varlet and I realize the atmosphere enough to be able to comment on the one real affair in Cats .

And that matter is a cardinal part of Cats ’ plot : the competition to reach the Heaviside Layer . Well , not the competition part . But the level itself is an actual thing , and it ’s an important one in the scope of human history .

A cat eager for death—because that is what happens if a cat actually reaches the Heaviside layer.

A cat eager for death—because that is what happens if a cat actually reaches the Heaviside layer.Image: (Universal)

https://gizmodo.com/i-think-i-watched-the-patched-version-of-cats-1840617855

It ’s not full of cat in various states of Nirvana , though . No cat could exist a misstep to the real Heaviside level without a peculiar courtship or vas to protect against both freezing and sweltering temperature and a deficiency of oxygen . The Heaviside stratum is a real part of the upper reaches of the atmosphere known as the ionosphere . It sit anywhere from 50 - 90 miles above the Earth ’s surface , and it ’s discovery in the former 1900s helped excuse a all important part of how radio waves do their thing .

Back then , radio transmission was a comparatively Modern matter . But scientists were beat as to why they did n’t just shoot off into infinite but instead followed the Earth ’s curvature . Oliver Heaviside , a British engine driver , hypothesized there was a layer in the Earth ’s atmospheric state that essentially helped radio wave cream around the planet . The surmise was proven correct and thus the Heaviside Layer was stand .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

Other researchers independently hypothesized the level existed around the same time as well , including American technologist Arthur Kennelly . In arighteous letterto the daybook Nature in 1925 , yet another engineer named Alexander Russell put the world of radio nerds on bam : “ If name calling are to be attach to this hypothetical stratum it should be called , in fairness , the ‘ Kennelly - Heaviside ’ layer , a name which is get down to be used in America . ”

Tell ‘ em , Alex .

Anyways , there you have it . The Heaviside Layer is real and easily explainable . How so many top - notch actors were suckered into the catastrophe that is Cats remains a mystery .

William Duplessie

Cats

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