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Huge Unidentified Organic Blob Floating Around Alaska
Z80xxc! writes "The Anchorage Daily News reports that a 15 mile-long blob of unknown, 'gooey,' probably organic material is floating past communities on Alaska's North Slope. The US Coast Guard sent pollution experts to investigate, who determined that it was not an oil spill or other type of pollution, but were unable to determine what it is. A sample is currently being analyzed by experts in Anchorage, while the blob is following the current northwards."
It's probably a shoggoth.
Someone tell Sarah Palin to go for a swim!
Someone let rosie o'donnell into the ocean?
I know there's a Sarah Palin joke here somewhere. Anyone want to make an attempt?
it was probably caused by global warming though.
i know there's a sarah palin joke in here somewhere..
It's that thing that killed Tasha Yar!
OMG, The blob has finally come to haunt us! Remember; don't let it get warm or we'll all be in trouble... HA, who said global warming couldn't kill!
I took this job on a crab boat, I was on there for like 2 months, there wasn't any internet, I forgot to pack any Playboys, I finally found an old SI Swimsuit issue in the galley....I didn't know there would much!
- Randy Marsh
Alright, who tagged this article with "Palin"?
That was too damn funny.
Dreamcatcher imminent?
It looks like a bunch of seaweed and an algal bloom.
... giving them diarrhoea ?
Too obvious?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
For the sum of Euro 100,000,000,000 , I will disable the
Organic Blob from its mission
Yours In Crime,
EVIL Richard B. Cheney
Alaska's fucked.
Lemmings are silly; dinosaurs are extinct.
welcome our new gooey overlords.
but seriously, it's probably garbage stuck together with some sort of fungus or something.
weinersmith
It's God!
...bow down to our giant blobby overloads.
Hey, someone had to burn some karma it might as well be me.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
...."ALIENS!"
Al-Gore warned you all that global warming would awaken man-bear-smogmonster, and now his dire warning has come to pass! Take shelter people of Earth, only Godzilla can save us now (assuming the Japanese don't kill the giant lizard who always saves them, God(zilla) knows why the hell they always try to kill the lizard who always saves their ass.)
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
Why am I suddenly reminded of Caddyshack?
So you see there is a big, slimy thing floating in the water and you don't like it.. What do you do?
a, Take probes, issue some press reports and analyse it while letting in float around.
b, No nothing, let someone else deal with it.
c, Clean up the god damn ugly slime before it starts to eat Alaska, and analyse it later.
d, Make a documentary on how the big unidentified slimy thing ate Alaska and make profit with it.
I can see it from my back porch!
and puked.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Let's see. RingTFA says "A mysterious glob of unknown material up to 12 miles long has appeared off Alaska's northern coast." Later, "spotted a long strand of the stuff and followed it for about 15 miles, shooting video from the air." Slashdot headline says "a 15 mile-long blob of unknown, "gooey", probably organic material"
Reading is FUNdamental!
It might be The Stuff!
Could this be the scandal that led Palin to retire?
...Steve McQueen froze it and global warming thawed it.
rj
...quick, build a bridge to it!
It's Trig's placenta. Don't touch it, you'll become retarded too.
Trolling is a art,
We all know what she's full of -- biological, gooey and stinky.
The article stated it was "up to 12 miles long" and that a team "followed it [by helicopter] for about 15 miles." Granted, the average digestee probably does not care if the blob devouring him is 12 or 15 miles long.
We're done here.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
She knew she couldn't do what had to be done as the Governor so she resigned in order to put together a rag tag group of misfits with the skills necessary to save the world.
One Family, One helicopter, One Mission.
Coming this summer! The Palins Hunt in...
Die Nature Die!
Insert pithy comment here.
She was advised to create a Blog, but heard blob
The power vacuum left by Palin is attracting all kinds of scum.
Then again, I'm in Philadelphia and have no idea what whale blood looks like....but it looks like it should be whale blood.
It ate a goose, could be the start of a biological grey-goo scenario.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
Yes boys, this is Linux after one too many proprietary blobs were stuffed into his cloaca. According to experts the body appears to have been dead for years and proprietary blobs and corporate patches were holding it together until now. On the other hand a beloved Linux apologist under the name of rms reports that he didn't notice any foul smell last week and suspects Intel could be the murderer.
We will keep you informed.
It's Sarah Palin's career, which has been completely taken over by pollution.
You can't advocate the levels of pollution that Sarah Palin does without yourself turning in to a large blob of the stuff.
If it screams, get the heck out of there...
My completely scientifically unfounded guess would be that it's what's left of some sort of bio-matter that was trapped long ago and was pushed up by warming waters or released from receding ice.
But it's not 2012 yet!
Global warming causes polar ice caps melting leading to the release of previously undiscovered materials into the environment.
I LOVE THE FUTURE THIS IS AWESOME! Why didn't you guys tell me the future would be so neat?
What new bacterial and viral infectious systems lie within this Alaskan Blob? I welcome thee to the Dot of Slash.
placenta...
that Sarah Palin was looking at Russia from her porch and spotted this!
"It's pitch black when it hits ice and it kind of discolors the ice and hangs off of it," Brower said. He saw some jellyfish tangled up in the stuff, and someone turned in what was left of a dead goose -- just bones and feathers -- to the borough's wildlife department.
I knew leaving The Blob in Alaska was a bad idea. Makes for a great sequel though.
I knew I shouldn't have had those beans.
I know it sounds stupid, but when I replaced the filler valve on one of my toilets last Friday, there was this brown goo at the bottom of the filler tank and I have no idea what it was or how it got there.
I had to scoop it out with a spatula and it was thick and brown and seems to have turned all the bolts that are holding the tank completely black. I've never seen that before. The stuff had a musty odor to it, kinda like what you would smell in a damp basement.
Then, yesterday, my son's toilet was making noise so I replaced his filler valve and there was no goo in his tank. He lives about 15 miles away from me.
... The Blob!
Has anyone checked gov. Palin's whereabouts lately? Considering the article, that's what I would do first.
Beware of the blob, it creeps
And leaps and glides and slides
Across the floor
Right through the door
And all around the wall
A splotch, a blotch
Be careful of the blob
-The Five Blobs
It's not even remotely surprising that people decided to start with the Palin jokes. It's just sad and pathetic that the overwhelming majority of you that made the 'jokes' weren't funny in the slightest, made 'retard' comments, or placenta jokes. For 'nerds'/'geeks', a lot of you are just unoriginal and uninspired.
Maybe it came from a herd(?) of whales during mating season with a severe lack of females.
"I don't have to think. I only have to do it. The results are always perfect, but that's old news." - Meat Puppets
The latest reports appear to confirm that this is Sarah Palin's slimy trail. Please tag the article "SarahPalin".
what does Fox Mulder says about that ?
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
Short story/short film in Stephen King's Creepshow 2. These campers swim out to a fixed raft in the middle of a lake and some goop, not unlike the goop in the article, follows them. One person touches it, and it leeches up her arm and pulls her in. This sort of continues for the next 10 minutes or so until there hero and heroine make out. It's Stephen King so it doesn't end well.
My point? Don't touch it. And don't let it touch you.
"It's pitch black when it hits ice and it kind of discolors the ice and hangs off of it," Brower said. He saw some jellyfish tangled up in the stuff, and someone turned in what was left of a dead goose -- just bones and feathers -- to the borough's wildlife department.
Wow, this is exactly like The Raft from Creepshow 2. If I remember right the blob in the lake ate a bird too!
My money is on the possibility that it's the "blob" from the movie. Anybody remember that movie? Scared the heck outta me.
Something tells me Alaska is screwed....big time! =/
Arnie voice: "It's not a tumor!"
Seriously?
"Welcome! To access adn.com content and features for free, you must be a registered user."
First, a wag of the finger to the OP for linking to something I have to register a plethora of information just to read "for free".
Second, a wag of the finger for ADN for requiring so *much* of my information.
Here's a nice link: blob news story on juneauempire
I for one welcome our pollution mutated self-aware organic blob overlords.
Sure, but the the real question is how long has it been killing people, and why doesn't it eat their feet?
-- The reader anything less than completely failing to not misunderstand this sig is cursed.
Is it certified?
I took a big dump overboard this morning. Sorry about that.
No sig today...
Quick, someone start rounding up those crystals.
Oops, did I type that out loud?
Everyone has missed the obvious here, it's in frigid waters off of Alaskas coast. It's shaped as a blob. This is obviously a new Google data center that water cooled, the shape is appropriate as it's for Google's cloud computing division. It's black because everyone know Google is evil. The engery is derived from burning baby seals provided by the Canadian government.
I wonder if it's this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKpmpxfieTA
It's not oil... but it's definitely biological...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh_SC-oZLMg
"Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig." - Bertrand Russell
Has any shipments of hair been lost lately?
I for one welcome our new blob overlord. And you would be wise to do so, as well. It had to be said.
It thawed out of the ice due to global warming. Kurt Russel must have missed a piece.
Where's my flamethrower!?
I'll put my money on the swarm .
For what it's worth the book makes a nice read while hanging out on the beach ...
It's Nanotechnology run amok. Bill Joy was right. We are all doomed.
Nobody knows for sure what the gunk is, but Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer says the Coast Guard is sure what it is not.
It's life, Jim, but not as we know it!
Sarah Palin embarrasses herself far more than we could hope to accomplish. We're just jumping on her bandwagon. She's so stupid that they didn't even have to invent a persona or punch line for her for SNL - they just repeated what she said.
I really hope the evangelicals push her to the top of the GOP ticket again. They'll find out for a second time that the business party that controls the GOP can put up with a fair amount of dumb, but anyone who actually believes in literal interpretations of bronze age mythologies will not be allowed to run the country.
She may have a shot at the VP for someone younger than McCain, but they won't suffer another Bush/Cheney scenario.
It's inhabited by meerkats. Just don't be caught on the floating blob after dark though.
The Mushroom King... someone should call the plumbers.
We need to find out if this thing is dangerous to people or not!
Xaotik Designs
It is certainly this alien organism from Solaris!
NUKE IT!
It's one manifestion of the "Yrr" from The Swarm
Repent, the end is nigh!
... and al gore will try to capitalize by connecting it to global warming, second flooding of the oceans, the sinking of our coastal cities, and the extinction of man-kind ... unless of course we all buy a prius
It's probably a mass of aquatic garbage that left Toronto during the civic strike for a better life.
you think you're late to the party? Marc Sanford is still trying to get a plane ride out of South America!
They sure are cute when they're little.
Have gnu, will travel.
I recall reading about a recent algae fertilization attempt to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases but that failed because the algae that the experimenters thought would sink to the ocean floor actually remained bouyant. Could this blob be the result of that experiment?
It's CREEP! Find the zerg hive and destroy it!
Watch Out for Zerg Rush!
It would be helpful to have some terran/protoss bases to provide support, but that involves blizzard putting back lanplay in starcraft 2.
This is clearly the result of man-made CO2 emissions.
Could it be caused by whales with digestive ailments?
Maybe it grew on he bottom and came up to the surface after it got caught in a crab net. I cringe at the thought of all the resultant swearing! Possibly the truth about the 'land' bridge has finally been revealed.
Hello Cruel World
.. the US coast guard will probably classify it as a 'test or weather balloons'. We're also gonna start hearing from the UOB community, abductions, sightings, etc...
TOP DSLR Cameras Reviews of the top DSLRs
...it might make sense to say "floating around Alaska". Personally, I think there's some bad acid floating around up there, and a lot of people are taking it!
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Ice 9, RUN!
Didn't they drop the blob off in Antarctica or something like that? It's finally thawed out! Oh god, we were so foolish!
Ia Ia Cthulhu nal fatang!!!!!
Sounds like what the Knights of Ni would say if they became Mythos fans.
Nah, they'd probably say:
Ni Ni Niiiiii Nii Niiiii!!!!!
Which incidently means exactly the same.
I'll check the computer model results. I'm sure that blobs are an expected result of Global Warming. Ummm... Is it a red blob? There are red blobs all over this map.
Hey man, back off. Do you know how hard it is to get *good* acid in Alaska.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
This thing reminds me of the blob creature in Creepshow 2's story, The Raft.
They ate the ones you didn't find.
remember the segment entitled "The Raft"
Hmm, Baby Ruth.
Chemtrail
Has anyone checked to see if Steve Ballmer fell out of an airliner on his way to a Windows 7 pre-launch in Asia?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Can't believe no one has welcomed our new Blob Overlord. Welcome Emperor Blob!
the blob's not sarah palin!?
I am a free man!!
...I think they should kill it with fire!
Or better yet nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
An article on a strange, organic entity shows up on /., and there's nobody here with the usual "I, for one, welcome..."? I'm confused!
BTW, it's probably CawboyNeal.
Hai guyz! Itz sarah palin kthxbai!
... going for a swim.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirates_of_Dark_Water
Seriously.
You're gonna need a bigger boat.
Could be the Zerg, checking things out before invading.
A filthy motherlode of ambergris? You know... from a hundred whales?
I say it's the alien black oil from X-Files
its scat, but is is polar bear? earth? aliens? god?
...Someone in the Republican party threw water on her, she melted, and that's what's left...
Around 10-15 years ago, the same thing happened off the Icelandic Westfjords, which is the north-west part of Iceland. At first, it was believed to be a spill of the waste matter from fish oil production, but then scientists determined it was caused by a mass death of some species of plankton, which are really small, almost microscopic crustaceans or similar. This particular species was quite oily and died off en masse because of increased sea temperatures or some such.
As I said, I can't remember any useful details, but that's more or less what happened back then, sometime near the end of last century off the coast of North-West Iceland.
J. Random BOFH
1. Maybe the satellite that crashed into the ocean in "Cloverfield" had some sort of nanotechnology in it.
2. Nanotech self replicates and converts resources into "Grey Goo".
3. Goo evolves on turbo into Cloverfield monster.
4. Humans retaliate with further nanotech that leads to the events in the novel: "Bloom" written by Wil McCarthy.
It's too late, the end is Bill Nye...
S/Linux Users/Useless Windoze fan boies/
Lieutenant Dave: At least we've got it stopped.
Steve Andrews (played by Steve McQueen in 1958): Yeah, as long as the Arctic stays cold.
http://www.adn.com/2835/story/864687.html
is a container ship captain trying to figure out what happened to those five containers full of Jello mix he was supposed to deliver.
Build a bridge and get over it. Everybody hates Palin, she's a power hungry crook with the intellect of a retarded giraffe. Even other repugs hate Palin, she KILLED YOUR CHANCES. Your Repug Rage is like sweet, sweet nectar to all of us REAL Americans. We drink your tears, they taste deliciously bitter, you whiny traitorous little America hater. Your sad little party will never again retake control of the government they despise so much.
Just wait, the ignorance and arrogance of that ass Obama will catch up to him faster than you think.
Cap and Trade will destroy the economy
Nationalized health care will cost more and provide less.
Not all Americans are as full of shit as you. They will wake up soon enough and leave you whimpering in the corner about how it's not fair.
Hey that's me surfing on the /. !
...perhaps Rush Limbaugh had liposuction?
... coincidence? I think not.
DO WHAT IT SAY!!!
This sounds like it could be the beginning one of those horrible direct-to-video Sci Fi movies. Probably starring Stephen Baldwin as the Cassandra-like scientist trying to warn everyone of the danger while the only one to believe him is a local fisherman and his beautiful daughter...
It is obviously a dead shape shifty thingy like the one from that dean koontz book. Clearly people.
Where is X-COM team, when we need them?
Must be her new gig now that she's resigned as Gov.
We are the 198 proof..
... it's "The Blob", popularized in that old Steve McQueen flick from 1958. After all, they couldn't kill it, but it stopped when frozen. So in the end, the military dropped it somewhere frozen, presumably up there in the Arctic... that same Arctic that's melting a little more every summer. I think this is the thing Al Gore's really worried about....
You DO all know that it was standard government policy back then to crank out a cheezy monster movie as cover for all that real weirdness that was going on: big spiders, bigger rabbits, big frogs, aliens, floating brains, walking plants, evil pink robots, Bat Boy, etc.
-Dave Haynie
Everybody thought the movie "The Blob" was fiction. Well, it wasn't. Now, with global warming, the blob has thawed. My suggestion is ... stock up on fire extinguishers.
Those are book deals, TV shows, Holywood offers bubbling and fermenting.
Something escaped the dangerous kitchen!
Why, yes! I AM new here.
Wonder if it's just the remains of jellyfish the Japanese have liquefied :)
It could be the 1997 bloop that the Navy picked up on their sonar equipment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloop). It looked like a biological entity, but was far to big to be any known creature.
Which wouldn't rule out it being a shoggoth.
Dead whale?
Whales are pretty big things to start with, I could imagine them feeding enough microbes to set up a temporary ecosystem that would exist for a while even after the whale corpse had decayed.
I lost my sig.
Courtesy Ben Elton
... a marine orga(ni)sm.
"5, Funny" one and a half hours after the very same joke on a thread with the very same topic only two positions above this one.
Do mods not even read the posts anymore?
May you consume us all...
Or maybe this is the Earth fighting back taking care of the Global Warming problem.
greg, REMEMBER ED CURRY!!!
The swarm: http://www.amazon.com/Swarm-Novel-Frank-Schatzing/dp/B000O17D00/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247836441&sr=1-1
Next step, make contact! :-)
This is clearly proof of global warming. The Blob has escaped its arctic prison. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blob
I wonder if a bog got trapped in a glacier, and then got thawed out or fell off in an iceberg. Can't wait to see the results.
You are not the customer.
whale jizz...
Lets find out if its edible. Organic stuff is good.
In other news, Rush Limbaugh is in town for a 2012 strategy session with Sarah Palin.
The Nanocaust begins (I heard you the first time)
.
.
**Never alone with multiple personality disorder (I agree)
Well they say life originated in water with high voltage. Couldn't this be just a pre-cellular organic construct? It seems rather uneventful in that case (beyond the fact we haven't seen it before).
With all the crap in the water I am more surprised we don't see this more often.
We finally get a shot at looking at pre-cellular life and all we do is label it, put it down, send it's offspring disproportionately to die in a war, insult it, then promptly hit it with a fire hose blast during a riot. This seems like a familiar formula for hating something...
Bunch of pre-cellular racists... probably gonna capture it and put it in a zoo...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Will it blend?
Do you ever play with your food?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R8PFvUZeLU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1lMEZgeyCA
Sure it's not Sarah Palin's old Douche Bag?
And knowing is half the battle!
GI-JOE!
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs