Slashdot Mirror
132-Year-Old Science Experiment Washes Ashore In Australia (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): A message in a bottle was tossed off the side of a German ship on June 12, 1886, as it sailed through the Indian Ocean, the date and location penned carefully in script on the scroll inside. In January, more than 131 years after the bottle was set adrift, an Australian woman walking on the beach noticed the thick, discolored glass of an old bottle poking through the sand. The bottle -- and the message -- had been found. It is believed to be the oldest known message in a bottle ever recovered. The woman, Tonya Illman, discovered the tokens from another era while walking on a beach near Wedge Island, in Western Australia.
The Illmans took their discovery to the Western Australian Museum, which verified that the bottle and the note date back to the 19th century. The museum contacted experts in the Netherlands and Germany for more information, and confirmed that the bottle had been dropped from a German vessel called the Paula. A search of German archives uncovered the Paula's original Meteorological Journal, and in a captain's entry from June 12, 1886, researchers discovered a reference to the bottle, thrown overboard as the ship was sailing from Cardiff, Wales, to Makassar, Indonesia. The date and the coordinates matched. The bottle had been tossed into the Indian Ocean from the ship as part of a decades-long experiment by the German Naval Observatory to understand ocean currents. Thousands of bottles were thrown into the ocean around the world from German ships between the 1860s and the 1930s, each with a form bearing the date and location where it had been tossed into the sea, the name of the ship, its home port and the travel route, the Western Australian Museum said.
The Illmans took their discovery to the Western Australian Museum, which verified that the bottle and the note date back to the 19th century. The museum contacted experts in the Netherlands and Germany for more information, and confirmed that the bottle had been dropped from a German vessel called the Paula. A search of German archives uncovered the Paula's original Meteorological Journal, and in a captain's entry from June 12, 1886, researchers discovered a reference to the bottle, thrown overboard as the ship was sailing from Cardiff, Wales, to Makassar, Indonesia. The date and the coordinates matched. The bottle had been tossed into the Indian Ocean from the ship as part of a decades-long experiment by the German Naval Observatory to understand ocean currents. Thousands of bottles were thrown into the ocean around the world from German ships between the 1860s and the 1930s, each with a form bearing the date and location where it had been tossed into the sea, the name of the ship, its home port and the travel route, the Western Australian Museum said.
What a strange era for people to sign their litter. At least we know who to fine.
Perhaps someone should tell the homeless in San Francisco, Seattle, or other cities to sign their trash and they too can be a part of science.
Well, compared to the bottle Slashdot is still extremely fast.
#DeleteFacebook
Was it from a Prussian prince ? Just send $120.00 and I will send you 2,000,000 marks.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
At least the bottle wasn't stuffed full of messages from the GNAA.
What do you have against the German Nautical Analytics Association?
Let me guess - you joined as part of a wave of applicants after some major oceanographic event, stormed off after some unintended insult, drifted off into other interests, didn't keep your dues current, and now you wind up here, complaining about them. I've heard that one before.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Did anyone notify Sting?
No one ever found and mailed these messages back. Not surprising, since most messages called into question the validity of the marriage of the parents of anyone finding the message.
But still, it counts as science, right?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact