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Chemist Identifies Mystery 'Blobs' Washing Up in Newfoundland
- chaghalibaghali 2y agohttp://archive.today/O92yg http://archive.today/O92yg
- chaghalibaghali 2y agoInterestingly something similar (but chemically different) happened in Australia recently too: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/bondi-beach-tar-balls-sydney-mystery-new-south-wales-b1192582.html https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/bondi-beach-tar-balls-...
- askvictor 2y agoThese turned out to be fatbergs (i.e. sewerage that hadn't broken down due to people flushing so-called 'flushable' wipes down the toilet)
- tiahura 2y agoSo, butylene rubber, a petroleum-based industrial adhesive. Meanwhile, Ottawa thinks it's plant based.
- NotSammyHagar 2y agothe article doesn't say it, but this all suggests someone probably had a bunch of old crap in a tank and dumped in the ocean. Maybe it was a giant ocean liner amount of it. Right? Why does no one want to just say that outright?
- Scoundreller 2y agoMostly because the article is about a chemist focussed on identifying WTF it is and less so an expert in shipping/unreported damage/clandestine dumping.
- whythre 2y agoSeems like goofy credentialism. Large amounts of this stuff don’t just appear; someone put it there. Why do we need an expert in ‘clandestine dumping’ to tell us that?
- chasil 2y agoAlternately, shipping containers are regularly lost from container ships. The article doesn't say if this was closer to raw material or waste.
- NotSammyHagar 2y agoGood point, didn't think about that stuff falls off ships pretty commonly.
- labster 2y agoNothing to worry about, it’s just Elon building Galt’s Gulch in the middle of the Canadian wilderness.
- mdek 2y agoThis reminds me of a very old video game "Science Sleuths"[1] I ran into as a kid, where you had to identify a blob on the beach. [1] http://www.midnightbeach.com/hs/Sleuths.html http://www.midnightbeach.com/hs/Sleuths.html
- Terr_ 2y ago> a spongy interior and range in size from a coin to a dinner plate, have been found for miles along Placentia Bay For a moment I misread that as washing up on Placenta Bay, which would have added a whole extra level of odd. Come to think of it, that blend of unsettling reproductive metaphors and coastal desolation would fit in the game Death Stranding.
- ikiris 2y agoYou don’t want to live on the shores of anywhere named placenta bay. There’s guaranteed to be a historical reason for a name that out there, and not in a way that’s good for property value or sunset watching.
- yencabulator 2y agoUsually it comes from a reasonably common last name Placencia, which comes from a town on the border region between Spain and France.
- tecleandor 2y agoFriendly picky correction for several different ways of writing it: French: Plaisance Occitan: Plasença Spanish: Plasencia And some extra trivia: There are a bunch of different French towns named Plaisance, some of them near the Pyrenees, so probably that where the Plasentia name came from, as I saw that it was French and Basque sailors the ones that arrived there. The Spanish city of Plasencia is quite far away from the Basque Country, in Extremadura, so probably they weren't referring (or remembering) that concrete city.
- CuriousCosmic 2y agoMystery Flesh Pit Beach?
- divbzero 2y agoOn the other side of the world, mystery “balls” washing up in Australia appear to have a very different origin: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-07/what-were-black-balls-on-sydney-beaches-made-of/104570780 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-07/what-were-black-balls...
- gcr 2y agoTL;DR: Rubber. Industrial adhesive. Nobody knows why this is there or who is responsible yet. > I’m quite confident that the sample that I handled was PVA butylene rubber,” [Dr. Kozak] said in a phone interview, describing a mix of synthetic rubber and polyvinyl acetate, known as PVA. That polymer, he said, is “the active ingredient in white glue — the kind of white glue you have at home is a very dilute, kid-friendly version of this stuff.” > Globs of the white sticky substance, which have a spongy interior and range in size from a coin to a dinner plate, have been found for miles along Placentia Bay since at least September > Dr. Kozak said that one of the first things he noticed was that the blob had “a kind of petrochemical odor to it, kind of like if you walk down the turpentine aisle of your hardware store.”
- mapt 2y agoA number of these sorts of "What is this" posts on Reddit about mysterious yellowish blobs, end up being polyurethane expanding foam. They float, and their default state is "mysterious blob", the only action necessary to create this is to puncture the aerosol container. Most people who use them end up throwing away an aerosol container that's still half full, but which has hardened at the dispenser tip.
- bjamesking 2y agoI live in rural Newfoundland. There was a Newfoundland post on 4chan /pol/ today and now this. Not something I see very often. We have some very unusual community names. Come by chance, Goobies, Cow Head, Grannies Hole, Blow me Down, Spread Eagle, and of course the famous Dildo.
- pvaldes 2y agoDidn't hit the jackpot this time, keep trying. The stuff they are chasing is more valuable than gold.
- jvan 2y agoI had hoped from the headline that it would shed some light on the Oakville blobs[0], but no such luck. The images don't look remotely the same material. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakville,_Washington#Oakville_blobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakville,_Washington#Oakville_...
- crazydoggers 2y agoThose sound like “Star Jelly” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_jelly https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_jelly
- KameltoeLLM 2y ago[flagged]
- runjake 2y agoIt's probably PVA rubber. They don't know where it came from. http://archive.today/K1FXn http://archive.today/K1FXn