E/V Nautilus team finds a weird purple orb in the California deep, scare off a crab first
17 replies, posted
[URL]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/30/submarine-scientists-crab-mysterious-glowing-purple-orb[/URL]
[video=youtube;pqyKrvk0aZo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqyKrvk0aZo[/video]
[QUOTE]More than 5,000ft below the surface of the ocean, in a canyon off the coast of southern California, the purple, globular creature appeared to glow under the submersible’s lights. "What is that?” one researcher asked, as the submersible’s camera moved over a crab to where the tiny orb hovered near a ledge.
“I’m stumped,” another replied. “I have no idea. I can’t even hazard a guess.”
“Are we going to grab it?” a third asked. The crab, startled by the submarine, scuttled toward the ledge. “Unless the crab gets it first.”
One of the crab’s spindly limbs knocked the orb, but it clung steadfast in place. A researcher guessed it could be related to plankton, the “kind that are sort of lumpy and thick like that”. Another tried “an egg sack of some sort” with “a little embryo type thing inside”.
The team trained a vacuum at the creature, ready to suction it into a storage container.
“It looks like a disco ball right now with the lasers next to it,” one scientist said. Before long, the purple mystery was transferred from the depths to the waiting ship above.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]Poulton said the crew believed the organism belonged to the pleurobranch group of gastropods, rather than the often brightly colored nudibranch, and may be a new species. No known species of California deep sea pleurobranch was purple, she said.
The team sent a sample to the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology for DNA analysis. Confirming a new species could take months, Poulton said.
Many pleurobranchids eat plankton and other microscopic life, and in general are less streamlined than their nudibranch cousins. The photo archives of the Sea Slug Forum reveal a menagerie of spotted blobs, leopard-striped slugs and flabby organisms lined with spikes and ridges.[/QUOTE]
In a nutshell:
[QUOTE]* E/V Nautilus team find likely sea slug 5,000ft below sea off Santa Barbara
* Analysis reveals foot and proboscis, making it ‘a gastropod of some kind’[/QUOTE]
What the organism looks like when it unfolds:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/45jBgGp.jpg[/IMG]
I love how casual the operators are :v:
"A purple blob, Blobbus Purpleus"
"Maybe it's a spider egg sac"
"...Let's leave it then"
That crab seems rather unfazed about the big metal ufo floating around above him.
I wonder what that thing is though. Hopefully there will be a follow-up.
[QUOTE=Sprockethead;50806396]That crab seems rather unfazed about the big metal ufo floating around above him.
I wonder what that thing is though. Hopefully there will be a follow-up.[/QUOTE]
it's a god, illuminating his surroundings for the first time in his life. he will become a prophet to other deep-sea crabs
[QUOTE=salty peanut v2;50806416]it's a god, illuminating his surroundings for the first time in his life. he will become a prophet to other deep-sea crabs[/QUOTE]
Imagine just standing around being a crab, tending to your little garden of worms, when a big metal box floats in and steals your disco-ball.
I love their vacuum. It appears to be the same kind of hose I use to vacuum the pool I work at, duct taped to some kind of makeshift vacuum head.
It's a koosh.
It's the funk!
hey thats the stress ball i lost as a kid
[QUOTE=notlabbet;50806865]It's the funk![/QUOTE]
Holy shit! The funk! You just sent me back a decade in time man.
Looks like some shit you'd find in Insaniquarium.
[IMG]http://fishlore-fishlorecom.netdna-ssl.com/Pictures/games/insaniquarium_lg3.jpg[/IMG]
[QUOTE=kaze4159;50806376]I love how casual the operators are :v:
"A purple blob, Blobbus Purpleus"
"Maybe it's a spider egg sac"
"...Let's leave it then"[/QUOTE]
Yup, that sounds like scientists to me.
Literally every researcher I've ever spoken to has some kind of Buffy-speak name for devices around their labs. Or will just kinda point at something and ask a junior researcher "hey is that thing doing the glowly shit yet?".
Technical terms are only really thrown around if you want to measure your cock with some other researcher or genuinely need to explain a concept to someone. Otherwise it's Buffy-speak time.
This is the start of, like, hundreds of bad horror and alien invasion movies
I absolutely love scientists being excited about the unknown
It's so much fun to watch
[QUOTE=hexpunK;50807512]Yup, that sounds like scientists to me.
Literally every researcher I've ever spoken to has some kind of Buffy-speak name for devices around their labs. Or will just kinda point at something and ask a junior researcher "hey is that thing doing the glowly shit yet?".
Technical terms are only really thrown around if you want to measure your cock with some other researcher or genuinely need to explain a concept to someone. Otherwise it's Buffy-speak time.[/QUOTE]
Very comforting to hear banter like this opposed to technical jargon.
[QUOTE=notlabbet;50806865]It's the funk![/QUOTE]
great, now I need to rewatch that
[video=youtube;_ZwRQDNIPog]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZwRQDNIPog[/video]
[QUOTE=matt000024;50807587]Very comforting to hear banter like this opposed to technical jargon.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, people will harp on about how "unprofessional" it is to just kinda casual your way through a lab exercise. But it comes with the territory really. Sciences of all kinds are super stressful at times, not being super rigid with how you jot things down at the time and refer to things is just one way to lighten the mood a bit (as long as you jot the right data down that is).
The expectation that science is 100% serious, 100% of the time is part of why the Climategate leak from my university a few years back was "shocking". Scientists were using quite casual language in the emails, referring to ideas and others in a less than respectful manner. But unsurprisingly it all turned out to be fine, and the whole "conspiracy" only existed if you misunderstood basic statistical principles and cherry picked the super casual email chains to shit.
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