Slashdot Mirror
Deep Sea Monster Baffles Scientists
sbszine writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has a report of a bizarre sea creature that has washed up on the coast of Chile. The creature is grey, lumpy, and the size of a school bus. Scientists have ruled out the possibility that it may be a whale -- the creature is an invertebrate, and perhaps even a new species."
'And wow! Hey! What's this thing coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding word like... ow... ound... round... ground! That's it! That's a good name -- ground! I wonder if it will be friends with me?'
ref
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
.. if it doesn't have frikin' laserguns on it's head?!
They finally found him!
Photographs showed a round leathery substance like a mammoth jelly fish, about as long as a school bus.
So show us the above mentioned photographs already! What the fuck kind of tease is this?
GMD
watch this
I wonder how many new species we will see before and after the earth slides into an ice age?
Squids have a hard beak inside, just like octopi. If the carcass is complete, figuring out if it is a squid should be easy, no matter how decomposed it is...
(Presumably) being a sea creature, wouldn't bouyancy make supporting a large body mass something of a non-issue? A big bag of muscle can get around pretty good in a basically 0-gravity environment. (Giant squid!)
:P but like most everyone else, I'd like some pics.
Not to say that it's not an interesting find.
=Smidge=
It's Saddam's long lost WMDs..
(biological division of course)
The CCC's website (referenced in the article) has found a large beached whale recently. Perhaps the article confused this beached whale (which the article may speculate on the species? My spanish == bad, My spanish via babel == only slightly better) There is a picture, but it is clearly a whale.
-Sean
Obviously, this is the remains of a slashtroll.
Consider: Large. Smelly. Spineless. Gray.
A slashtroll ventured away from his keyboard under the bridge, and went to the beach, perhaps in search of a mate. It was caught by the sunlight (which it was completely unprepared for) and killed.
So, all we need is for some sick^Wstupid^Wbrave person to volunteer to visit the depths of -1 and see what trolls have stopped posting.
I'd volunteer, but I just don't care.
www.eFax.com are spammers
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTV
where am i
"Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms and organs and processes - viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells -- rubbery fifteen-foot spheroids infinately plastic and ductile -- slaves of suggestion, builders of cities -- more and more sullen, more and more intelligent, more and more amphibious, more and more imitative! Great God! What madness made even those blasphemous Old Ones willing to use [...] such things?
"At the Mountains of Madness", by H. P. Lovecraft
I'm waiting for the next slashdot story: "Decapitated, Slime-Covered Body of Researcher Found!"
At least they didn't put a cache of explosives under it and try to get rid of it by detonating it.
Lasers Controlled Games!
The dead creature was mistaken for a beached whale when first reported about a week ago, but experts who went to see it said the 12-metre mass of decomposing lumpy grey flesh apparently was an invertebrate.
In other news, Darl McBride doesn't know what it is either, but has confirmed that SCO will sue it.
McBride alleged that being an "[nvertebrate] mass of decomposing lumpy grey flesh" is a business process patent owned exclusively by, and licensed exclusively to, SCO, and that therefore the sea monster is infringing SCO's IP.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Yep, the Oregon State Highway Division already tried that, and it didn't work!
"The Chilean Navy first spotted the mystery specimen along with another large mass, but the other dead animal turned out to be a dead humpback whale."
I thought it was well known that humpback whales and giant squid were mortal enemies... I'd say these two had an all out battle and both died as a result.
Well that's my theory, I'm stickin' to it.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
CTHULU
CTHULU
Cthulu
Cthulu
Cthulu
Cthulu
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
This sounds awfully similar to the colossal squid that was found a few months back. The article with pics is at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2910849. stm
The creature is grey, lumpy, and the size of a school bus.
Jimmy Hoffa! I knew he'd be found!
The U.S. Navy is testing a new high-powered sonar system. Perhaps it is killing ocean animals whose existence we are (previously) unaware of?
Do invertebrates have ears? I don't know the answer, but I do know quite a good deal about the U.S. Navy's sonar program (called SURTASS or sometimes SURTASS LFA) as I just spent the past week researching it for a debate tournament.
SURTASS LFA (Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System, Low Frequency Active) sends out sonar pings to search for mines, submarines, and the like at around 180 dB, though it can get louder or quieter than that. It does indeed cause severe damage to marine life, particularly whales and dolphins, who communicate with sonar and therefore are susceptible to this type of sonar. It causes severe acoustic trauma and sometimes bleeding around the ears and even death. It is also known to cause strandings of whales...
The reason I bring this up is that if any sea creature doesn't have ears/can't hear sound/whatever, they are immune to this type of sonar. However, if they do have ears, they can be quite vulnerable to it. Do any invertebrates have ears? Do squid? This could be related.
Oops!
Cthulhu fhtagn, Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! No Cameras! No Cameras! Cthulhu fhtagn!
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
There are photos available on the CNN site:e .science.reut/index.html
"Giant sea creature baffles Chilean scientists"
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/americas/07/02/chil
Unless someone has already posted
I wonder how many new species we will see before and after the earth slides into an ice age?
I don't think you, me or we are going to see many new species before or after.
What others will see are your, mine and our dead corpses.
And they will see it long before the end of any ice age.
It's the source code for Internet Explorer
This pic of the thing doesn't show it all, but it definitely looks big and like it would smell bad.
Frogs are primitive animals - so the occasional extra toe is not that unusual. But this is very unusual.
The thing that intrigues me is that there are people who have expertise in the area of texture and smell of decomposing whale skin. Is there a professional society for these people?
Anyway, sounds neat, and I'm sure they can figure out if it is a whale by doing a little PCR and sequencing. (I think this is my answer to most science questions these days)
anyone else remember reading about underwater microphones picking up a sound that is unidentified by marine biologists? Apparently the sound is so loud they had to check for geology explanations such as volcanoes or earthquakes. Marine biologists claim that the giant squid could not make the noise because it lacks a throat or something similar. So... they have a rare recording they think came from a living creature so large that no one knows what it is! Makes you think about what lurks in the deep ocean....
pot.kettle(black);
Reuters has finally put up some pictures.
You've all been waiting for this, but of course in a photo it just looks like a big gray blob.
AP photo
Reuters photo
Judging from the replies to grandparent and to an anonymous coward who linked to the same CNN story, there originally were photos which were removed sometime between 5:19 AM and 7:38 AM, and then put back in before 11:11 AM. Those of us who looked during that period were justifiably upset, but we should have flamed CNN, not the posters.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show