Les Alyscamps by Joanna Kavenna, with artwork by Robert Williams

Large galaxy that shone approximately 2.5 million times brighter than the sun. Found once, but when distinguished astronomers gathered to examine it further, they found it had disappeared. Now the astronomers are trying to find the galaxy again. There are further questions of how you can lose an entire galaxy, and whether the galaxy was actually there in the first place. (See also under Things that were thought to be lost but turned out never to have existed).

Les Alyscamps: 1888 painting by the Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh, oil on canvas 73 × 92 cm. It depicts the tree-lined avenue of Les Alyscamps at Arles, with fashionable locals promenading and Roman tombs on either side of the pathway.

This is the strory of a box-related scandal. I’ll explain everything or, at least, as much as I can. I was living in Oslo at the time, working for an Icelandic philosopher called Professor Alda Jónsdóttir. She was eminent, tall, strong and terrifying. She once took me cross country skiing and I almost died, but that’s another story. During those years, Alda Jónsdóttir was working on a project called Thinking outside the Box about Thinking outside the Box or TOTBATOTB for short. The title was one of those serious jokes that can sometimes cause such a lot of trouble. But that’s another story, as well.