Mysterious Golden Orb Found at The Bottom of The Ocean
At around 3,300 meters (2 miles) below the surface of the ocean off the coast of Alaska, where the warm light of the Sun never penetrates, an NOAA Ocean Exploration remotely operated underwater vehicle came across a strange, golden orb.
The bizarre undersea object, encountered during an expedition in 2023, was found "tightly adhered" to a rock dotted with white sponges, measuring around 10 centimeters (4 inches) across with a hole in one side.
For the scientists making the discovery, it wasn't entirely clear what the mysterious orb might be. Initial suggestions from the researchers conducting the livestream of the dive included an egg casing from a mystery species, a dead sponge, or a coral.
"I don't know what to make of that," said one of the researchers on a livestream.
"It's definitely got a big old hole in it, so something either tried to get in or tried to get out," another speculated.
"I just hope when we poke it, something doesn't decide to come out," one researcher said. "It's like the beginning of a horror movie."
Whatever deep horror that might be, it might yet have some growing to do. As reported in The Guardian, one hypothesis suggests something may have hatched from the golden case. Something not exactly tiny.
"We're going with egg because of the texture. It felt fleshy and it doesn't have any obvious anatomy. It has a hole in it that suggests something has come in or gone out. But it doesn't look like any egg I've ever seen," deep-sea ecologist Kerry Howell of the University of Plymouth in the UK told the paper.
"If it is an egg, the really interesting question is whose egg is it. It's quite big. That's not a small fish egg. That's a sizable thing."
Using a robotic arm, the researchers gently nudged the object, determining that it was quite soft, before collecting it via suction for further study.
The fact the 'egg' was on its own is almost as intriguing as its size. Typically, oviparous animals lay eggs in clutches.
So if the object is an egg, there's something unusual about it. Which is quite marvelous, really: whatever it is, the orb has something new to tell us about the deep ocean, and the diverse life that thrives therein.
There's a lot that happens in the inhospitable ocean depths that we don't yet understand. Crushing pressures and freezing temperatures are just two factors that have kept humanity from exploring widely.
However, with remotely operated vehicles acting as a proxy, the ocean is gradually revealing its secrets. Including how mysterious deep ocean species procreate.
"Isn't the deep sea so delightfully strange?" said exploration coordinator Sam Candio of NOAA Ocean Exploration.
"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.
"While somewhat humbling to be stumped by this finding, it serves as a reminder of how little we know about our own planet and how much is left to learn and appreciate about our ocean."
An earlier version of this article was published in September 2023.
Scientist Who Discovered 'Dark Oxygen' Ignored It For Years. Here's Why.
A Steaming-Hot Volcanic Vent Has Opened Up in Yellowstone
Male Octopuses Stun Females With Venom to Survive Mating, Study Finds
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Gizmodo
6 hours ago
- Gizmodo
Solar Orbiter Captures First Clear Views of Sun's South Pole—and It's a Hot Mess
For more than 60 years, various spacecraft and telescopes have journeyed through space to stare at the Sun, capturing haunting images of the giant ball of hot gas at the heart of our solar system. Our view of the star is limited, however, by Earth's orbital plane, which allows us to observe the Sun's equator head-on while its polar regions remain in a frustrating blind spot. Solar Orbiter is now the first to image the poles from outside the ecliptic plane, offering a rare look at its chaotic magnetic field. On Wednesday, the European Space Agency (ESA) released the first clear images of the Sun's south pole, revealing that both north and south magnetic polarities are currently present on the same side. The new images will help scientists better understand the Sun's 11-year magnetic cycle and what governs its solar outbursts that sometimes result in geomagnetic storms on Earth. Solar Orbiter used momentum from its flyby of Venus on February 18 to push itself out of the ecliptic plane that contains Earth's orbit around the Sun. Around a month later, the spacecraft was able to view the star from an angle of 17 degrees below the solar equator, just enough to get a good view of the Sun's south pole for the first time. 'We didn't know what exactly to expect from these first observations – the Sun's poles are literally terra incognita,' Sami Solanki, who leads Solar Orbiter's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager instrument team from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, said in a statement. The science team used three instruments aboard Solar Orbiter to capture images of the Sun between March 16 and 17. Each instrument observes the Sun in a different way; the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) captures the Sun in visible light, the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) images it in ultraviolet, and the Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument detects light emitted by charged gas above the Sun's surface. By combining the viewing powers of all three instruments, scientists observed the Sun's south pole in turmoil. Normally, each polar region has its own magnetic field characteristics. As the Sun reaches a period of solar maximum during its 11-year cycle, its magnetic polarity flips, with the north and south magnetic poles reversing. During Solar Orbiter's observations of the Sun, the polarity from the north and the south poles are both present in the south pole. This marks a crucial time in understanding the Sun's activity. After the magnetic field flips, a single polarity slowly builds up in the Sun's poles and takes over. When the Sun reaches its solar minimum in about five to six years, the north and south poles will each have their own magnetic polarity. 'How exactly this build-up occurs is still not fully understood, so Solar Orbiter has reached high latitudes at just the right time to follow the whole process from its unique and advantageous perspective,' Solanki said. The scientists behind the mission used SPICE to measure how clumps of solar material move across the Sun's surface. Using the Doppler effect, which describes changes in frequency of light or sound as it moves away or toward the source, the team created a velocity map showing how the material's speed varies between the Sun's poles and equatorial region. With the help of Solar Orbiter, scientists will gain a better understanding of why solar wind travels faster at the poles than it does at the Sun's equator. Solar Orbiter is just getting started. The recent observations are the first set of images captured from the spacecraft's newly inclined orbit, but the spacecraft is gearing up for another Venus flyby on December 24, 2026, which will further tilt its orbit to 23 degrees below the equator to get an even better view of the Sun's poles. 'This is just the first step of Solar Orbiter's 'stairway to heaven': in the coming years, the spacecraft will climb further out of the ecliptic plane for ever better views of the Sun's polar regions,' Daniel Müller, ESA's Solar Orbiter project scientist, said in a statement. 'These data will transform our understanding of the Sun's magnetic field, the solar wind, and solar activity.'
San Francisco Chronicle
9 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
What is the summer solstice? An astronomer explains
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Stephen Schneider, UMass Amherst (THE CONVERSATION) The summer solstice marks the official start of summer. It brings the longest day and shortest night of the year for the 88% of Earth's people who live in the Northern Hemisphere. People around the world traditionally observe the change of seasons with bonfires and festivals and Fête de la Musique celebrations. Astronomers can calculate an exact moment for the solstice, when Earth reaches the point in its orbit where the North Pole is angled closest to the Sun. That moment will be at 10:42 p.m. Eastern Time on June 20 this year. In Europe, Africa and points eastward, the moment of the equinox falls on June 21 locally, making that the day of the solstice. From Earth, the Sun will appear farthest north relative to the stars. People living on the Tropic of Cancer, 23.5 degrees north of the Equator, will see the Sun pass straight overhead at noon. Six months from now the Sun will reach its southern extreme and pass overhead for people on the Tropic of Capricorn, and northerners will experience their shortest days of the year, at the winter solstice. The Sun's angle relative to Earth's equator changes so gradually close to the solstices that, without instruments, the shift is difficult to perceive for about 10 days. This is the origin of the word solstice, which means 'solar standstill.' This slow shift means that daylight on June 20 is only about 2 seconds longer than on June 21, at mid-northern latitudes in the United States. It will be about a week before there's more than a minute change to the calculated amount of daylight. Even that's an approximation — Earth's atmosphere bends light over the horizon by different amounts depending on weather, which can introduce changes of more than a minute to sunrise and sunset times. Monuments at Stonehenge in England, Karnak in Egypt, and Chankillo in Peru reveal that people around the world have taken note of the Sun's northern and southern travels for more than 5,000 years. From Stonehenge's circle of standing stones, the Sun will rise directly over an ancient avenue leading away to the northeast on the solstice. We know little about the people who built Stonehenge, or why they went to such great effort to construct it — moving multi-ton stones from rock outcrops as far as 140 miles away. All this to mark the spot on the horizon where the Sun returns each year to rest for a while before moving south again. Perhaps they, like us, celebrated this signal of the coming change of seasons. Leer en español.
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
SXSW London: Man hoping to bring dodo and mammoth back to life teases Jurassic Park collaboration
The man working on bringing the dodo and woolly mammoth back to Earth has hinted at the SXSW London event at a collaboration between his bioscience lab Colossal and the Jurassic Park films. The entrepreneur Ben Lamm, founder of Colossal Biosciences, has long been asked about the parallels between his work and the films of Jurassic Park, but has insisted returning the dinosaurs to Earth isn't possible at present due to the lack of available DNA. Dodos and mammoths died out more recently and DNA is available from fossils. Speaking at the SXSW London event in Shoreditch, Lamm teased a future partnership. During a panel discussion with the actor Sophie Turner, Lamm said he was 'very excited about Jurassic Park, and maybe there's future things coming. Not in the dinosaur world, but with those guys.' Lamm has always insisted his 198 employees at Colossal Biosciences are nothing like the fictitious world of Jurassic Park. Speaking to The Guardian earlier this year when asked about the comparison, he said: 'People have to remember that that was a movie, right?' Jurassic World Rebirth, the sixth film in the franchise, arrives in UK cinemas on 2 July. Colossal Biosciences has used genetic engineering processes to bring back to life the dire wolf, an extinct species that lived around 10,000 years ago. The three dire wolves are in a private 2,000-acre ecological preserve somewhere in the US, although the location has not been revealed. They are named Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi, inspired by the TV series Game of Thrones. Also at the SXSW London event, Lamm revealed he hoped to share further news about Colossal's journey to returning the Dodo to Earth this summer. SXSW London features panels and events with entrepreneurs, film-makers, musicians and thought leaders and runs in Shoreditch until 7 June. Mayor Sadiq Khan opened the event, which originated in Texas in 1987, by pitching London as an international AI hub. Read more:
