Mod parent up- right on. The cable needs to be made of "baloneyium" (as someone famously opined about the composition of Niven's Ringworld). Its composition and engineering are way beyond our current capabilities - not so far that it's not worth pursuing, mind you, but this contest does seem to put the proverbial laser-powered cart before the carbon-nanotube horse.

Or this.

whatcouldpossiblygrowwrong

...that the very first even to occur on the Internet was a **buffer overflow**? Talk about a zero-day exploit.

I'm old enough to have seen that a breathless "the real secret to Stradivarius's violins discovered!!!" story comes up about once ever ten years, then fades away, making way for the next iteration.

When I was in high school it was that the wood he used was floated down rivers before it got to him, and therefore picked up minerals - which a modern maker claimed to have duplicated by boiling the wood in a broth made from shrimp shells. (I'm not making this up.) Earlier, it was something to do with the exact composition of the varnish. And no doubt numerous others that I never heard of.

Somehow, through it all, Strads are still prized above all other instruments, and keep increasing in value each year.