In the beginning was the Bork: 'Heart of the Earth' exhibit reveals Raspberry Pi in existential crisis

Dynamic Earth's ancient rock holds not primordial crystal, but a tiny Linux box having a bad day

Bork!Bork!Bork! From the beginning of time, there has always been Bork. Lurking within the heart of this ancient rock is not a precious crystal or a rare fossil. No, it's a Raspberry Pi desktop and dialog.

Register reader "Chewi" was taking in Edinburgh's rather excellent Dynamic Earth (a science center and planetarium aiming to educate and inform visitors about the history of the planet) and peered through a viewport into the heart of a fake rock, only to find Bork peering back.

It's unclear what he was supposed to see, but it certainly wasn't a Raspberry Pi OS desktop with a pop-up bleating about removable medium.

The "Removable medium is inserted" message usually appears when something like a USB drive or SD card is inserted into the computer, and the operating system tries to automatically mount it. So perhaps someone has attempted an update, or maybe there has been some nefarious activity behind the scenes. Or behind the stones, as the case may be.

Our reader was otherwise distracted by his family's needs but told us, "Perhaps if I'd had a thorough look around, I might have found evidence of a rogue visitor attempting to crack this rock, so to speak."

Also visible on the desktop is CIRCUITPY, which we reckon is likely CircuitPython, a derivative of the MicroPython programming language geared towards microcontrollers and a useful tool for getting started with Python.

We'd have to agree with our reader that it is a commendable choice by the museum, despite the borkage. Perhaps there is an educational opportunity here to restore the distressed diminutive computer.

Our reader concluded: "The Raspberry Pi Foundation's mission is to promote the study of computer science to young people, but I suspect this is not quite what they had in mind."

True. However, given the recent eyewatering price rises of Pi hardware, there's justification for saying "there's gold in them thar rocks", though we would never condone using a hammer and chisel to extract it.

Instead, gaze into the planet's history and know that, right at the beginning of Earth's geological history, there was Bork.

And we do not doubt that there will also be Bork at the end. ®