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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?
(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=
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
"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?
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.
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)
AP photo
Reuters photo