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Mysterious holes on the seafloor
- jamestimmins 4y agoIt often feels like there aren't many mysteries left in nature, so it's great to see scientists react with childlike excitement about the prospect of something new and unexplained.
- swayvil 4y agoCheck out meditation. It could be called a study of seeing. Given one way of seeing, certain models and conclusions can be drawn. But change the seeing and the models cease to hold. And then change it again. And again. We have a couple of methods for messing with that. A whole seeing-cultivation program. Lots of good mystery there.
- kadoban 4y agoThe deep ocean is a great place to look for such mysteries too, we have such a limited view of it, and it's _such_ an alien place in a lot of ways.
- marginalia_nu 4y agoWell all the old mysteries aren't really moving forward very much so a new mystery is a lot more exciting. The odds of solving a mystery is most likely inversely proportional to how many people who have attempted to solve it before. There's still a lot we don't know, though. There are entire fields which are, by their very nature, limited in how much we can learn. Archeology and astronomy are two. Like what's up with the Phaistos Disc?
- michaelsbradley 4y agoI never heard of The Phaistos Disc previously. Very clearly it’s another example of someone making a record of the weird lightshows in the sky that ancient peoples witnessed when enough energy was flowing through the local plasma environment to cause it to go from dark mode to glow mode.
- abecedarius 4y agoWhat do they mean by sublinear here?
- kuprel 4y agoO(n^k) where 0 < k < 1
- aaaaaaaaaaab 4y agoMore like o(n).
- quantum_mcts 4y agoWould O(ln n) be "sublinear", though?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- thaumasiotes 4y agoOf course. kuprel already said so.
- sterlind 4y agoI'm bad at math, but this is because d/dx ln(x) = x^-1, while d/dx x^k = kx^(-1+k), so as long as k > 0 the derivative of the latter is larger, right?
- selimthegrim 4y agoWell sure but you can also just graph them or compare Taylor series (in radius of convergence, appropriate cut, etc)
- thaumasiotes 4y agoWell, the question here was just "is ln(x) sublinear or not?". You can answer that question with much less work: the second derivative is always negative, so the function must be sublinear. Any function that grows linearly must have a second derivative of zero.
- a9h74j 4y agoAlso interesting that they reference similar evidence in fossils.
- silasdavis 4y agoThe spinal column of a since devoured vertebrate?
- BLKNSLVR 4y agoObligatory cthulhu reference
- jessepasley 4y ago
- dhosek 4y agoI’m not saying it’s aliens but… it’s definitely aliens.
- galaxyLogic 4y agoWhy are aliens messing with our sea-floor?
- dennyabraham 4y agoThis reminds me of another deep sea mystery trace, Paleodictyon[1]. Once an unconnected set of geometric fossils and modern hole patterns, it's been discovered that this phenomenon has occurred in a consistent form for half a billion years up to the present day. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleodictyon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleodictyon
- ThisIsMyAltFace 4y agoThere's a nice PBS video about them with footage of the holes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz1fccY3S84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz1fccY3S84
- SnowHill9902 4y agoAnybody else repulsed by that pattern? I don’t know why but I am.
- giantrobot 4y agoTrypophobia. I won't link to Wikipedia, if such a thing bothers you I'm not going to try to trigger it.
- OGWhales 4y agoThere is also a subreddit dedicated to that phobia, I don’t believe I have it but some of the pictures there definitely give me the willies.
- LadyCailin 4y agoIt's so you can more easily tear the ocean floor.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- taneq 4y agoThat, or so the printer could more readily grip the crust while Earth was being fabricated. They usually remove those in post-processing but got lazy with these ones.
- btat1-2 4y agoYou're right. You can see that phenomenon every day with low-price manufactured objects. Even toys!
- bottled_poe 4y agoEveryone knows that’s how starfish get around
- keyle 4y agoI wonder with moving water, how old can these holes really be? Is it that still down there? You have to admit that the linearity, the spacing and the size and shape are strange if considering an organic origin... Fascinating. Side note, I wish these kind of discoveries could have some kind of hashtag you could subscribe on the web to keep tabs on them.
- cleerline 4y agotry google search alerts. "You can get emails when new results for a topic show up in Google Search. For example, you can get info about news, products, or mentions of your name."
- simple10 4y agoThe American NR-1 submarine had wheels on the bottom. Not the kind that would make this pattern, but I wonder if there are any classified subs with cog wheels for some reason. Seems an unlikely explanation for these holes but got me googling around for weird submarines.
- geoffeg 4y agoI considered this too and started discounting it when I looked more closely at the paths in the images. The holes aren't perfectly spaced and each hole seems to be at a slightly different angle. But yea, could still be some kind of submarine with an unknown tread or wheel system we've never publicly seen.
- JoshTko 4y agoThe weirdest part is that its in a very straight line. Could only make sense if this was like a single large organism and even still weird.
- dclowd9901 4y agoYou’d probably expect them to be much longer if that was the case.
- himinlomax 4y agoThe ocean is vast, the likelihood of stumbling on such traces by chance is ridiculously low.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- daneel_w 4y agoCould they be traces left by equipment performing some sort of surveying procedure for the sake of laying submarine communications cable? I know there's a cable somewhere at about 1.5 kilometers below sea level, but I don't know if there's a maximum feasible depth.
- phinnaeus 4y agoSubmarine cables lie on the seafloor, apparently at a maximum depth of 11km. I believe that's just the maximum depth they've been laid at though, not necessarily a theoretical maximum.
- pvaldes 4y agoHuman in my opinion. Maybe a bottom sampler o some scientific stuff. Maybe fishermen stuff.
- avl999 4y agoI am not saying it's UFOs but many of the UFOs observed by the US Navy/Airforce were spotted on top of oceans and many have been reported to "disappear" into the ocean. The famous Tic-Tac UFO for example notably disappeared "into the ocean".
- gfodor 4y agoI thought this too but these holes don't look very engineered. They look random or organic. That said, this would be an interesting way to create an 'existence proof' of technological capability and presence if there was something about the holes that permitted ruling out animals or other natural phenomena.
- mrandish 4y agoThe US Navy and Air Force UFOs explained: https://www.youtube.com/c/mickwest https://www.youtube.com/c/mickwest spoiler: It's not aliens.
- postalrat 4y agomick west says it's not aliens spoiler: mick west will say everything is not aliens
- saberdancer 4y agoTo be fair, Mick West usually finds a very convincing theory that is much more likely than aliens. He said he'd love to see footage of something that is truly unexplainable. I mean who wouldn't.
- alberth 4y ago> many of the UFOs observed by the US Navy/Airforce were spotted on top of oceans The ocean also covers 75% of the earth. So there’s a fairly high chance it’d occur over an ocean.
- thih9 4y ago
- raamdev 4y agoGiven the irregular distance between holes and the different angles of the holes, I'd guess something organic. There's still a lot we don't know about even well known fish like sharks, what to talk of fish or marine life that we have yet to discover. Seeing the raised ridge along the entire set of holes makes me wonder if they're from some kind of eggs that hatched after being embedded in the seabed. It's amazing that there are still so many mysteries like this on Earth.
- SkyMarshal 4y ago> Given the irregular distance between holes and the different angles of the holes, They say the exact opposite in the video: "One of the things we're interested in is how almost perfectly aligned these are and the regularity of the spacing of the holes and the size of the holes themselves. And the shape of the holes, the angularity, the rectangularness."
- ncmncm 4y agoThey are pretty regular, but not perfectly so; and in the vid they are sorta straight but do curve a bit. Biological regularity it less rigid than physical regularity.
- nomel 4y ago1:02, they look to be about +/- 40%. 1:22 looks like about +/- 30%. For what an oceanographer usually sees, sure, but I can't imagine it's a wheel.
- anonymousiam 4y agoThe first photo made me think that the observed phenomena is simply an undersea cable.
- mullikine 4y agoSome theories - A large starfish rolls along the sea floor, leaving the dashed line - A crab bouncing on its back, ricocheting with a current - A fish with an IQ of 300 hoping that alien intelligence from above will locate it, left a mark in the mud, to liberate it - The world was manufactured in a sowing factory. - The world sustained an injury and had stiches
- mc32 4y agoIt’s hard to tell. It’s a single angle so it’s kind of hard to tell what it could be. If they had multiple angles and some closer ups, we might be able to guess better. As it is it’s hard to tell if it’s something protruding with shadows or or the opposite like slits or holes in the surface.
- phinnaeus 4y agoThere's two angles
- rendall 4y agoThese are clearly holes left by creatures living deep within the Earth, beginning to investigate their cosmos. They have not yet found the surface, but that day is coming. Oh, yes. Someday they will arise. We should all prepare ourselves.
- samplatt 4y agoI like the idea of an animal probing the floor for scent/sound/EM fields for prey, but you'd think we would have a seen a lot more of it if that were the case. The article didn't mention excavating the holes to see what was underneath... My guess is maybe it's a creature that lays eggs in sand.
- yosito 4y agoAt the end of the video, they show a small portion of the holes where they dug a sample, and they said they're testing it with results pending.
- 4y ago
- slater 4y agodrug smugglers with a submersible that uses some kind of wheeled, sawtooth'd contraption to propel itself. heard it here first, folks!
- ricudis 4y agoIt's blatantly obvious that the holes are leading to r'lyeh.
- howlin 4y agoLooks an awful lot like the patterns left by woodpeckers who probe wood for critters to eat. Perhaps this is an animal that occasionally checks for sound, chemicals or some electrical field that would indicate a burrowed creature nearby to eat.
- lhuser123 4y agoPrevious discussion. Same holes, different article. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32272937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32272937
- JoshTko 4y agoMy guess, the large spine of some fish embedded in the floor that somehow got displaced.
- AtlasBarfed 4y agoI was scared they were talking about methane deposits. Rapid release of deep seas methane deposits is ELE stuff.
- Jaruzel 4y agoTeeny-tiny Dune Sandworms, obviously.
- klyrs 4y agoThat would be Beetlejuice sandworms.
- cbanek 4y agoWell, they are still sandtrout, living in the water!
- snapcaster 4y agoIn the (not recommended) post frank herbert dune novels they actually have water variants of sand worms that get evolved and create ultraspice
- krisoft 4y agoIt reminds me of how qanats look like on aerial images.
- aaron695 4y ago
- eurasiantiger 4y agoClassified adversarial submarine activity directing seawater into volcanic faults in an attempt to have it make contact with magma, increase pressure and cause artificial natural disasters.
- eurasiantiger 4y agoLet me add to my previous comment that it would be prudent for governments around the world to look for these patterns at known seafloor heterogenous fault zones in places where major volcanic, earthquake or tsunami events have occurred in recent history, such as Tonga, Japan and Iceland.
- NovaVeles 4y agoGad to see they have already thought of my first guess. Gases raising from the sea bed. Could be something as boring as that.
- smarterstuff 4y agoHow old are these ? I feel like the chain of a ship's anchor could imprint such a pattern, and wither away if the water is acid enough. Near a volcano for example.
- silisili 4y agoThey're more than a mile below surface. I know of no vessels with chains nearly that long...
- smarterstuff 4y agoI was thinking of a chain that would have sunk at the bottom.
- oment 4y agoThese holes are from an organism - there are known holes of similar theme that have known inhabitants.
- londons_explore 4y agoGoogle claims the longest mooring chain is 17km long. That makes a 1 mile chain not seem unlikley.
- silisili 4y agoYikes! Well, thanks for educating me. I knew some large carriers had much shorter chains, so assumed they would have been the longest. Guess not.
- chinathrow 4y agoI thought I experienced a glitch in the matrix. I had https://www.lofi.cafe/ https://www.lofi.cafe/ playing in one tab, muted the tab to play this video and the ambient sound was still there. Turns out the background of the video is almost identical to the one I was listening to on Lofi.cafe...
- dclowd9901 4y agoI’m going to sound like a doofus here but… why not just dig them up? It doesn’t sound like they’re particularly rare and digging them up would probably lend a lot of insight as to why they’re made. I guess an argument could be made that it’s not worth harming the organism that made them to figure it out but then why care at all?
- gala8y 4y agoOT: If you are ever curious to see what lies beneath surface, there is a YT channel I could not recommend more: https://www.youtube.com/c/NaturalWorldFacts https://www.youtube.com/c/NaturalWorldFacts
- cbanek 4y agoI know this sounds almost conspiracy theory-ish: just looking at the picture, my first guess is man-made. But I'm almost always wrong. It just looks really perfectly spaced and each one is the same, in a very mechanical way. With all the talk of snooping on undersea data cables, undersea drones, and the continuance of submarine warfare, it seems possible that this is some kind of undisclosed military drone on either side looking for cables?
- tiku 4y agoAt 2,5 kilometres or 1,6 miles? Only way that is true is if some cage with points sticking out fell from a ship? Or perhaps wood, that has been rotting away since. -Edit: That also doesn't explain the multiple tracks and that they are not really aligned. Only saw the 2 pictures, but in the video you can see a lot of other "tracks".
- kaybe 4y agoGiven that they said it also appears in the fossil record I think we can rule out human-made.
- binbag 4y agoIt's Cthulu.
- LightG 4y agoThe Meg.
- simne 4y agoGood idea for military, to use for propulsion wheels, which will create traces of such holes. Because they near impossible to detect from big distance, only on very close, and such tech will be extremely silent.
- lugorrr 4y agoFleshlights for dolphins maybe? .. sorry for being obscene ...
- fredley 4y agoCould it be a large creature fell to the ocean floor and was digested. At some point its ribcage pierced into the sediment, making the holes, then once that too had been digested only the holes remain?
- andrewflnr 4y agoWe would see much more disturbance in the surrounding sediment. A whale fall is quite messy, there's never a stage where a perfectly clean spine is in contact with pristine sediment.
- ecmascript 4y agoMaybe its those tic-tac aliens hovering over the sea? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpeSpA3e56A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpeSpA3e56A
- thenthenthen 4y agoIf we ignore the fossil record: Def something with mining and colonialism, like those strange holes in the desert: https://youtu.be/twAP3buj9Og https://youtu.be/twAP3buj9Og
- elendee 4y agothe tunnel theory seems fairly easy to test. maybe not from within a submersible thousands of feet down though.
- CapsAdmin 4y agoMaybe some courtship display? If that's the case we should see them elsewhere too.