10 ms·
Mystery 'golden egg' found on ocean floor
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- r721 3y agoNOAA post: https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/news/oer-updates/2023/golden-orb.html https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/news/oer-updates/2023/golden-... Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R0FqypOsiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R0FqypOsiY
- DoctorOetker 3y agoDoes their on-ship wet lab not include genome sequencing equipment? If not, why not? It feels very weird when both phys.org and NOAA pump up the mystery by for now temporarily pretending they never heard of genome sequencing.
- webmobdev 3y agoCut them some slack please - even they need the occasional PR hype to ensure funding.
- DoctorOetker 3y ago[flagged]
- Sunhold 3y agoI don't know why you are assuming it is standard, expected or necessary to have genome sequencing equipment on the ship. There's no doubt that they've brought it back to land and are working to identify it now.
- DoctorOetker 3y agoDo you accept or deny the desirability of on-ship genome sequencing equipment? Nobody knows the sum total of all observations made by mankind. If one can effectively sequence immediately, one can quickly how novel the genome is, and if its not novel, if its a novel lifestage. On the way to land the specimen (if alive) may die, or (if dead) be consumed and rot on the way to land. If the species or closest known artificially sustainable life-form can be identified on-ship, probability to keep it alive can be increased. I don't doubt they are working to identify it, and I wouldn't be surprised if they already did (perhaps on-ship). What disturbs me is major popular science platforms are pro-actively feeding mysticism and trolls by staying mute on the most obvious next logical step. I do not at all assume it is standard: I assume the number of nation-state actors investing resources in exploring the deep sea ecology (to this depth) constitutes a very small list. So by no means can any of this research be taken for granted and assumed standard. The mere activity of this type of research is already non-standard. Genome sequencing equipment has been highly miniaturized and become a lot more affordable. So yes, I do expect a wet-lab on this vessel to actually have genome sequencing equipment. If not, I think the researchers have a right to lament it publically.
- dlor 3y agoHave you ever been on a boat? It's not safe to assume the existence of anything, including a toilet, on them.
- DoctorOetker 3y agohave you ever seen a picture of this mothership? I think it's pretty safe to assume it has toilet... https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/collaboration-tools/EX_Capabilities_Overview.pdf https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/collaboration-tools/E...
- aydyn 3y agoEven if you were able to start sequencing immediately, standard sequencing alone takes on the order of a day. And then depending on your computational methods, could take another few hours. Remember that it's not just the sequencer, you also need extraction, so you need to add a centrifuge, a vortex, a pipetting station, a PCR machine, a -20 C freezer, a spectrophotometer and a whole lot of reagents, additional personnel, and probably tons of other things I'm forgetting. Also I doubt most instruments are specced to be able to handle ship sway on the open sea. It really just isn't practical.
- gopher_space 3y agohttps://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/collaboration-tools/EX_Capabilities_Overview.pdf https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/collaboration-tools/E... I'm still reading but it looks like they're sailor/pilot oriented thanks to their telepresence capabilities. Land lubbers get to stay ashore.
- DoctorOetker 3y agothanks for the link, it mentions the wet lab but not the equipment it entails.
- jsndidneske 3y ago[flagged]
- dunefox 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Gys 3y ago> “ While we were able to collect the 'golden orb' and bring it onto the ship, we still are not able to identify it beyond the fact that it is biological in origin," NOAA said. I assume biological as in ‘made by’ someone or something. Edit: the original NOAA article is better as it shows a clearer photo. It seems an organic object with a gold like color.
- Turskarama 3y agoThat's the exact opposite of what they mean, unless an egg counts as "made by" the mother I suppose. Biological in this case means not manufactured, and not a mineral/chemical process.
- hnarn 3y ago> I assume biological as in ‘made by’ someone When is that ever the definition of “biological”?
- ftxbro 3y agothere are all kinds of golden colored blobs in the ocean probably its a golden colored sea cucumber or sea squirt
- dvh 3y agoCould be broken/decomposing "adult massage toy", similar to the story of 80 year old Chinese man finding weird mushroom like plant while digging well: https://youtu.be/4CBaTBCSUUI https://youtu.be/4CBaTBCSUUI
- mdekkers 3y agoThat can be many things, but I doubt it is an adult toy. You’ve not read tfa
- booleandilemma 3y agoThat's gotta be a parody.
- mock-possum 3y ago[flagged]
- pvaldes 3y agoLooks like silk. Chitinous feel. no idea about what is this thing Some flatworms and molluscs produce eggs encapsulated in ribbons. maybe a brown algae or a fungus. Very fungal in the preserved last photo. There were three objects like this it seems.
- pvaldes 3y agoHum, and there are the Chrysophyceae. Some colonies can develop a wall and even some kind of a false tissue also. They are mostly freshwater but some are marine. Chrysophyceae are a kind of microscopic "brown algae" named the golden algae.
- melindajb 3y agoIt’s like no one’s seen “Alien.” (Humor!)
- teeray 3y agoOr Sphere :)
- night-rider 3y ago> As theories swirled on social media, including that of it being an alien egg, scientists extracted their August 30 discovery from the ocean floor to analyze it in a laboratory setting The 'it is just aliens' razor only works none of the time, until it does work.
- tiffanyg 3y ago'it is just aliens' is no 'razor'... Possibly a 'spork', but certainly no 'razor' ....
- sandGorgon 3y agoHarry Potter's golden egg of the merpeople!
- cout 3y agoSounds like an episode from Seaquest DSV. The glowing orbs turned out to be phosphorescent feces.
- apomekhanes 3y agoThis shouldn't have been downvoted, even if only for the phrase "phosphorescent feces" ... on its own merits. Fun phrases forfend fatigue phenomenally. Edit: wow, I'm realizing that "phosphorescent feces" is at more like "Eminem" levels of phoneme repetition / assonance / etc. My much more basic largely merely alliterative response pales in comparison.
- SoftTalker 3y agoShiny shit?
- adolph 3y agoChrome coprolite “A coprolite (also known as a coprolith) is fossilized feces.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprolite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprolite
- climb_stealth 3y agoOh wow, thanks for mentioning this! It makes me appreciate Terry Pratchett even more. I didn't know what the word meant but remembered it was used by the Discworld trolls in some capacity. Turns out it is used as an insult [0]. [0] https://wiki.lspace.org/Coprolite https://wiki.lspace.org/Coprolite
- adolph 3y agoPratchett is fun to read. Thinking of another was it might be said: Rocky rectal remains
- codetrotter 3y ago[flagged]
- joshuaheard 3y agoMy money is on discarded egg casing.
- whynotmaybe 3y agoAm I the only to think that it's kinda sad that the standard reaction when we find something new is to remove it from where it was and dissect it? If it was some creature that's evolving we surely stopped it in its track.
- furyofantares 3y ago> If it was some creature that's evolving we surely stopped it in its track. Pokemon style evolution?
- night-rider 3y ago> If it was some creature that's evolving we surely stopped it in its track. Unless there's many of these things floating about. A small sample to dissect isn't going to slow down the march of evolution.
- anigbrowl 3y agoTrue, but considering it's the only one we've found and we have no idea what it is it doesn't seem a good idea to assume that.
- saaaaaam 3y agoThis is a little like examining a very small public park, poisoning a pigeon[^1] and worrying that you’ve wiped out an entire species. I think we should have a certain amount of trust in actual scientists that when conducting a very small scale survey of a bit of the ocean floor the cost benefit analysis of taking an unrecognised thing is carried out in a way that means they are not causing an extinction. [^1] Whether you use peanuts coated with cyanide is entirely up to you.
- salawat 3y ago>I think we should have a certain amount of trust in actual scientists that when conducting a very small scale survey of a bit of the ocean floor the cost benefit analysis of taking an unrecognised thing is carried out in a way that means they are not causing an extinction. I think we should have a certain amount of trust in actual scientists that when conducting gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens the cost-benefit analysis is done in such a way as to mean that they don't cause a pandemic. As it turns out, scientists can often be the last people we want doing the cost benefit analysis of their own work.
- the_gipsy 3y agoIt's the golden orb that makes your innermost wishes come true!
- Qem 3y agoNow curious to know who was sacrificed to deactivate the meat grinder.
- justusthane 3y agoWhat a coincidence, I just finished this book the day before yesterday (Roadside Picnic, for those wondering). I didn't like it!
- passwordoops 3y agoMy money's on egg case... my Unsolved Mysteries obsessed inner child is on a relic from the Deep Ones
- Loughla 3y agoThat's an interesting question: which would have a greater impact on the world; that a God doesn't exist, or that it does and it's an eldric sort of beyond the stars horror?
- passwordoops 3y agoEven more interesting question: what if people have become so cynical that proof of either is met with a shrug and questions of "what is the media really hiding?"
- napierzaza 3y ago[dead]
- nobodyandproud 3y agoThis comment will age badly, but it looks like a gold colored office chair wheel swallowed/encased by a jelly or sponge.
- tiffanyg 3y agoHaha, interesting take. My wager (3 cents): a slime mold that adopted "potato chip bag camouflage" so that it could secret itself to the safety of the ocean via a shipping container - all part of a desperate bid to escape land and the impending calamities of climate change, including those already seen in its rates on home insurance!
- Obscurity4340 3y agoWas gonna ask for your 3¢ ;)
- sschueller 3y agoSomeone's trash is someone else's treasure. Probably what it will turn out to be.
- amelius 3y agoProbably some item that can be found somewhere on AliExpress.
- nickdothutton 3y agoAlways apply Arthur C. Clark’s classification system for mysteries.
- Loughla 3y agoA friend of mine described Rama as the worst case of blue balls for your brain. It was the first sci-fi book she had read. She kept talking about how excited she was to find out more about the ship and the aliens, because sci-fi. I didn't have the heart to tell her.
- 15457345234 3y agoI was about to say, doesn't 'Cradle' revolve around a mysterious golden sphere/thing found in the ocean or in a coral bed?
- flyers_research 3y agoViral marketing for the new alien movie
- bandyaboot 3y agoResearchers win tour of fanciful, under-ocean chocolate factory.
- justinclift 3y agoIt'll be funny if it turns out to be the droppings of something. "We found a squid which shits gold dust!" ;)
- garte 3y agoImmediately thought of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5UXOwphsLk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5UXOwphsLk Nobody else got Sphere vibes? Or I am just getting old.