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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. It's Saturday,

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Speaker 1: so once more we have a VAULD episode for you.

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Speaker 1: It is the L ten and Antenna from eight ten,

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. That's the original publication date. This is

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Speaker 1: the first of three episodes where we got into looking

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Speaker 1: at the basic some of the out there ideas that

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Speaker 1: emerge in response to lo fi imagery and you know,

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Speaker 1: legitimate mysteries about what's going on in some of the

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Speaker 1: harder to reach places in our world or even beyond

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Speaker 1: our world. So without further ado, let's jump right in.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert.

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Speaker 3: Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick. And oh boy, I'm

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Speaker 3: excited because it's anomalist historical photograph Day on Stuff to

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Speaker 3: Blow your Mind. Today we are going to be talking

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Speaker 3: about a moderately famous underwater image that has been classified

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Speaker 3: by some as an anomaly. Now, I think it's debatable

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Speaker 3: whether the word anomaly could or should still be applied

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Speaker 3: to it, because I guess normally anomaly is defined as

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Speaker 3: something that is different from what is normal or expected

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Speaker 3: or at least appears to be different from what is

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Speaker 3: normal or expected. I don't know if you can still

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Speaker 3: apply that to a photo that you pretty much have

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Speaker 3: conclusively identified and sorted into the mundane category now but

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Speaker 3: still looks weird. Maybe we can adjudicate that later in

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Speaker 3: the episode. But anyway, one thing that is interesting about

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Speaker 3: anomalist photographs in our culture is that the anomaly kind

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Speaker 3: of has a secondary definition beyond just something that is

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Speaker 3: or appears to be different from what is normal or expected,

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Speaker 3: and that secondary definition is proof of aliens confirmed.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, this is a this is a topic we've

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Speaker 1: we've touched on a little bit before. I mean, things

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Speaker 1: have come up, like, you know, supposed ancient etchings or

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Speaker 1: carvings of dinosaurs. I remember we did at least in

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Speaker 1: that one episode on that in the past. And then

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Speaker 1: you can also apply this to things like photographs of bigfoot,

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Speaker 1: photographs of strange lights in the sky, and so forth.

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Speaker 1: And granted, especially in those two categories, you often get

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Speaker 1: into situations where there is often a strong case to

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Speaker 1: be made for intentional fakery on top of all the

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Speaker 1: other things that can be going on with a photograph,

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Speaker 1: you know, actual photographic anomalies, atmospheric anomalies, and so forth.

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Speaker 1: Today's episode deals with an image that is not a

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Speaker 1: work of fakery. It is an actual image that was

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Speaker 1: gathered through scientific exploration. But without proper expertise, you can

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Speaker 1: easily see well, basically anything you want out of it.

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Speaker 1: You know, the thing about an anomaly like this quote

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Speaker 1: unquote is that, yeah, whatever your preconceived notions happen to be,

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Speaker 1: you can easily attach them to this thing, especially if

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Speaker 1: you don't have that expertise and you don't have that

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Speaker 1: sort of I don't know, general open mindedness about what

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Speaker 1: it might be. Right.

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Speaker 3: This is one of many cases where if you don't

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Speaker 3: have the requisite contextual knowledge, something that is initially just

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Speaker 3: a weird looking photograph can take on all kinds of significance,

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Speaker 3: and in fact that there has been a historical mythology

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Speaker 3: built around this one weird photo we're going to talk

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Speaker 3: about today. But I think before we get into the

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Speaker 3: photo we're talking about in today's episode, since this is

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Speaker 3: going to touch on the the idea of proof of

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Speaker 3: aliens confirmed and UFO lore and all that, I feel

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Speaker 3: like it's fair to sort of just announce where we're

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Speaker 3: coming from. We've talked about this somewhat on the show before,

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Speaker 3: and we've actually gotten some recent listener mail where people

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Speaker 3: were asking us to address the recent news about so

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Speaker 3: called UFO disclosures, So to do that at the top, Rob,

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Speaker 3: I don't want to speak for you, but I think

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Speaker 3: we're probably on roughly the same page here. You can

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Speaker 3: correct me if I'm wrong. Despite the recent flurry of excitement,

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Speaker 3: and if you haven't kept up with it, the short

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Speaker 3: version is there was recently whistleblower testimony in front of

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Speaker 3: a House Oversight subcommittee in the US Congress from a

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Speaker 3: man who claims that people have told him that the

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Speaker 3: US government knows aliens exist and we are in possession

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Speaker 3: of crash spacecraft and alien bodies, etc. There is no

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Speaker 3: hard evidence publicly available, he's saying people told him this.

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Speaker 3: So despite the excited media coverage about this, my personal

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Speaker 3: position remains basically unchanged. And I would characterize that as

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Speaker 3: regarding the topic of alien contact or alien visitation of

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Speaker 3: Earth with curiosity and open mindedness, but strong skepticism.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and I do want to drive home it's

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Speaker 1: perfectly all right to be excited by all of this.

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Speaker 1: I mean, the idea that somebody's testifying about this in

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Speaker 1: front of the House Oversight Subcommittee is pretty exciting, and

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Speaker 1: he's saying some pretty exciting things and you can't help

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Speaker 1: but ask, well, if true, what does that mean? And

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Speaker 1: raises a lot of questions. But but yeah, I think

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Speaker 1: there are some legitimate questions to be raised before you

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Speaker 1: really take all that to the bank. And plus, as

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Speaker 1: we've talked about on the show before, the idea of

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Speaker 1: alien life, it's a complex question. You know, the deeper

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Speaker 1: you go, there's obviously a big difference between saying yes,

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Speaker 1: I think there is something else alive in the universe

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Speaker 1: and say saying yes, I think there are other life forms.

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Speaker 1: They're technologically advanced, they have spaceships, and they have visited us,

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Speaker 1: and oh, some of our secret at advanced technology today

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Speaker 1: is based on things that we were able to pilfer

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Speaker 1: from their crashes. So like, is their life? Is there

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Speaker 1: intelligent life? To paraphrase Arthur C. Clark, Any answer to

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Speaker 1: any such question I think is equally mind blowing.

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Speaker 3: Right, that's right, And I think it's very good to

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Speaker 3: disentangle those two questions. One the question of whether aliens

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Speaker 3: exist at all somewhere out there on that question, I

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Speaker 3: think we just don't have enough information to decide, so there,

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Speaker 3: I don't even really lean one way or another on

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Speaker 3: that as of today. I think it's just totally open question,

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Speaker 3: not enough information to judge.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there you could basically say, well, there is,

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Speaker 1: there isn't. And to get more directly to the Arthur C.

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Speaker 1: Clark quote about this, like either answer is just absolutely

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Speaker 1: stunning to say that we are completely alone in the universe,

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Speaker 1: that we are the anomaly, are planet of life or

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Speaker 1: to say, oh, yeah, there is somewhere out there, there

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Speaker 1: is a planet of life, and it may be just

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Speaker 1: so far from us, so far from us. That also

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Speaker 1: questions of when become complex to think about. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: it could be out there and we will simply never

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Speaker 1: know about it, and it will never know about us,

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Speaker 1: you know. I mean, it's all this is just mind

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Speaker 1: blowing to contemplate.

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Speaker 3: But while I think alien existence overall is a totally

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Speaker 3: open question, visitation is a question where I guess my

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Speaker 3: standards are a little bit different, and I do start

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Speaker 3: to have a lean on that question. I will say

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Speaker 3: I'm not one of those people who thinks it's like

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Speaker 3: gross or shameful to even investigate the idea of alien

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Speaker 3: contact on Earth, like I sometimes see skeptical scientists like

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Speaker 3: getting angry about like Avi Lo coming out in the

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Speaker 3: news and saying, Oh, I'm combing the seafloor looking for

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Speaker 3: metal spheres to run tests on them, and I think

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Speaker 3: maybe they're aliens. I understand their frustration with him sort

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Speaker 3: of maybe jumping the gun on the conclusion and over

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Speaker 3: hyping results to say I think there are aliens. But

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Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's fine to investigate if that

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Speaker 3: interests you, as long as you are objective about what

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Speaker 3: you find and you don't misrepresent or overhype in conclusive

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Speaker 3: results to the media, which I think is a legitimate

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Speaker 3: thing to get kind of annoyed about. And that is

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Speaker 3: the main thing that I think a lot of skeptics

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Speaker 3: find annoying about that sort of project.

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Speaker 1: It is kind of interesting that if a scientist is

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Speaker 1: talking about putting like shrimp on a treadmill or something

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Speaker 1: to that effect or of that sort of nature, there's

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Speaker 1: always the follow up question, Oh, have you said you

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Speaker 1: have you solved the problem of cancer? Yet? Have you

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Speaker 1: have you? I guess you've you've you've tackled all of

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Speaker 1: these other big scientific problems. But generally I don't hear

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Speaker 1: that criticism leveled at UFO scientists and so forth. They're

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Speaker 1: not like, well, wait, why are you not curing can

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Speaker 1: So why are you looking for UFOs? I don't know.

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Speaker 1: You can interpret that how you wish.

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Speaker 3: Well, that is interesting. I mean, I guess I would

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Speaker 3: say scientifically, and looking for evidence of alien visitation of

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Speaker 3: Earth is like a kind of a high risk, high

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Speaker 3: reward strategy. It's sort of a gambit. It's like you,

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Speaker 3: I mean, here, I'm speaking with you know my personal opinion,

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Speaker 3: I'd say you are very very likely wasting your time,

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Speaker 3: but on the off chance you're not, you will make

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Speaker 3: the most important discovery in human history.

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Speaker 1: True. Yeah, So it's a it's a big gamble. It's like,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's the Latto, right, you know that the

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Speaker 1: odds are just astronomical, but the prize is enormous, So

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Speaker 1: you go ahead and you buy your ticket and you

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Speaker 1: scratch it off.

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Speaker 3: But anyway, but coming back to the question of like

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Speaker 3: evidence for alien visitation, I would be you know, I'm

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Speaker 3: not like somebody who doesn't want to find out about this.

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Speaker 3: I would be extremely interested and excited if there were

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Speaker 3: any good reason to believe aliens ever came to Earth.

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Speaker 3: But I have been interested in this topic and never

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Speaker 3: seen evidence that was even close to convincing. And furthermore,

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Speaker 3: what I have seen is like a pattern of behavior,

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Speaker 3: a pattern of behavior from alien contact advocates of presenting

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Speaker 3: bad evidence as good or promising that there is good

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Speaker 3: evidence somewhere else, maybe being hidden from you, maybe soon

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Speaker 3: to be revealed, and you'd be really convinced if you

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Speaker 3: saw that, but for some reason you can't. And so

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Speaker 3: that pattern of behavior, I would say, has conditioned me,

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Speaker 3: like it puts my guard up about any explosive claims

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Speaker 3: on this subject, even if they're being listened to by Congress.

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Speaker 3: So you know, at this point, I'm I'm still I

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Speaker 3: would say, I am still waiting for good evidence, and

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Speaker 3: I reserve judgment until good evidence actually shows up. That

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Speaker 3: you know, like that people can look at.

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Speaker 1: I like how you're always up for the possibility. For me,

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Speaker 1: if I'm being honest, there's some weeks where I'm like,

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Speaker 1: this is not a good week, y'all. If we are

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Speaker 1: going to discover that the alien visitations have been occurring

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Speaker 1: and there's like definite proof that I just would prefer

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Speaker 1: that it happened like maybe next month, because I've got

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Speaker 1: a lot going on right now.

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Speaker 3: Well, that's a good point, i'd say. Also, yeah, there

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Speaker 3: are some weeks I'm more ready to meet the Grays

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Speaker 3: than other ones.

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Speaker 1: Now, one thing I want to stress is, you know

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Speaker 1: we're talking about here is the sort of questing for

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Speaker 1: objective evidence, and how often there is a lack of

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Speaker 1: objective evidence here. And I do want to stress something

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Speaker 1: that we've touched on before regarding subjective experiences. Subjective paranormal

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Speaker 1: experiences are certainly real to those who experience them, and

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Speaker 1: they can clearly be life changing in a number of ways.

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Speaker 1: So you know, you or people you know may have

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Speaker 1: had these experiences. You may have seen something you couldn't

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Speaker 1: completely explain. And as humans, we've always had such experiences,

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Speaker 1: and we can apply skepticism and scientific logic to why

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Speaker 1: these experiences occurred. You know, in short, supernatural or the

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Speaker 1: other worldly explanations are rarely necessary, but we so have

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Speaker 1: to acknowledge the impact of the experience, right.

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Speaker 3: And this is a thing that I think makes the

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Speaker 3: UFO subjects kind of difficult because a lot of people

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Speaker 3: who are very devoted to belief in UFOs have in

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Speaker 3: some sense had like an experience of their own or

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Speaker 3: they think, you know, they're like personally connected to this subject,

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Speaker 3: and so it's very important to stress that, like, while

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Speaker 3: you've got to keep your skeptical standards of evidence up

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Speaker 3: when you're actually saying have aliens really been here? You know,

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Speaker 3: you want to have a high standard of evidence, but

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Speaker 3: at the same time be sensitive to people and say,

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Speaker 3: like us, looking for that standard of evidence is not

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Speaker 3: a personal critique of you as a person having had

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Speaker 3: an experience. You know, it is very common for people

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Speaker 3: to have strange experiences that they don't know how to explain.

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Speaker 3: And it's even if maybe aliens are not the best

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Speaker 3: actual explanation according to the evidence we have, it's not

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Speaker 3: unreasonable that some people would I don't know, seek an

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Speaker 3: explanation of that sort when they've had a very powerful,

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Speaker 3: unexplainable experience.

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Speaker 1: Right, something you can't explain happens. You look for answers.

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Speaker 1: You also look for patterns in the world around you.

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Speaker 1: But as you look for answers, you also encounter pre

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Speaker 1: existing scripts to try and make sense of what that was.

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Speaker 1: And if it's lights in the sky, well there are

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Speaker 1: a few ready made scripts that are probably the easiest

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Speaker 1: to absorb, that have like social support. Some of them

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Speaker 1: are religious, some of them do relate to things like space, aliens,

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Speaker 1: and so forth, and so it makes sense that you

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Speaker 1: would latch onto those to make sense of what happened

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Speaker 1: to you. And yeah, then you go out into the world,

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Speaker 1: you look for patterns, you look for supporting information.

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Speaker 3: Now here's where we're going to start moving back toward

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Speaker 3: our anomalist photo of the day, or supposedly anomalous photo

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Speaker 3: of the day. There is a counter to everything we've

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Speaker 3: been saying so far, which is sometimes people will say, well, okay,

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Speaker 3: maybe you're not impressed with everything you've seen so far,

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Speaker 3: but what about this photo of a triangular arrangement of lights,

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Speaker 3: or this video of a white object moving across the sky,

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Speaker 3: or this object on the seafloor that looks like a

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Speaker 3: piece of alien radar equipment, etc. There are a lot

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Speaker 3: of pieces of media out there, a lot of photo

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Speaker 3: and video and sometimes sound recording and stuff where people

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Speaker 3: can say this looks weird or this sounds weird. I

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Speaker 3: can't think of anything that I know of on Earth

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Speaker 3: that would produce an image like this, so shouldn't all

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Speaker 3: of that stuff count as evidence of aliens? And this

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Speaker 3: brings me to a concept that I've been thinking about

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Speaker 3: recently that is really just based on an offhand phrase

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Speaker 3: I heard when I honestly don't remember exactly which interview

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Speaker 3: this came from, but I was listening to a series

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Speaker 3: of interviews with a science writer and skeptical UFO researcher

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Speaker 3: named Mick West. West He's written articles for skeptical publications

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Speaker 3: about all kinds of subjects, written about kim trails and

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Speaker 3: things like that, but also about UFOs of late, and

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Speaker 3: has done analysis of popular UFO or UAP videos to

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Speaker 3: try to figure out if you can actually identify what

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Speaker 3: is it we're looking at in this video, where's some

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Speaker 3: kind of weird object appears to move across the sky,

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Speaker 3: and in many cases he is able to identify. In

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Speaker 3: some cases he's not. And so I apologize if I'm

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Speaker 3: not using West's exact preferred terminology here, but this is

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Speaker 3: just what I heard him say offhand in one moment,

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Speaker 3: and it was the idea of something called the low

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Speaker 3: information zone. I think maybe another way to think about

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Speaker 3: the same idea would be to call it the zone

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Speaker 3: of low resolution, with low resolution referring in the specific

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Speaker 3: sense to photographs and other attempts at imaging that produce

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Speaker 3: a blurry or fuzzy or indistinct product, but also to

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Speaker 3: think about low resolution in a broader sense, where it

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Speaker 3: would refer to records or pieces of media or accounts,

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Speaker 3: any type of evidence that contain lower desirable ratios of

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Speaker 3: identifying detail and are generally lacking in context and clarity.

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Speaker 3: I think this concept is really useful when talking about

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Speaker 3: UFOs or UAPs, where it seems to me West's sort

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Speaker 3: of generalization is that all of the pieces of evidence

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Speaker 3: for aliens or other non human intelligence making contact on

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Speaker 3: Earth that remain somewhat interesting or still seem kind of

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Speaker 3: unsolved or viable, tend to exist in this zone of

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Speaker 3: low information or low resolution, where there's a lot of vagueness,

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Speaker 3: lack of verifiable detail, or lack of context. Essentially, there's

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Speaker 3: not enough information in them that a reasonable observer can

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Speaker 3: be confident that they understand what they're looking at. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 3: when there is evidence in the sort of high information zone,

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Speaker 3: say when there's like really good video that's in focus

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Speaker 3: and has proper foreground background for scale, and has a

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Speaker 3: lot of information in it. It seems like it's specifically

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Speaker 3: those cases that are more likely to turn out to

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Speaker 3: have provable, clear, identifiable, mundane explanations. These turn out to

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Speaker 3: be plastic bags or balloons or airplanes or stars or

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Speaker 3: well known digital artifacts produced by cameras and other types

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Speaker 3: of sensors.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, this is also where intentional fakery tends to come

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Speaker 1: out as well.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, And I thought this was interesting because I

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Speaker 3: do not at all want to represent myself as a

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Speaker 3: UFO expert. I'm not in any way, but it just

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Speaker 3: sort of squares with my experience as a generalist like

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Speaker 3: researching extremely variegated, supposedly anomalous phenomena throughout history. We've covered

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Speaker 3: a lot of subjects like this on the show at

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Speaker 3: some point, especially with things that have been claimed as

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Speaker 3: proof of aliens or proof of the supernatural or whatever.

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Speaker 3: It seems it's very often in the cases where information

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Speaker 3: quality is high that you're most likely to nail down

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Speaker 3: an alternative explanation to figure out, ah, here's what's going on.

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Speaker 3: It does have an explanation, the explanation is mundane or

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Speaker 3: within the range of known causes and so forth, and

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Speaker 3: it's in cases where the information quality is very low,

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Speaker 3: where details are vague or uncheckable, where crucial context is missing,

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Speaker 3: and so forth, that you end up having to shrug

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Speaker 3: your shoulders and say, I don't know what we're looking at.

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Speaker 3: I don't know what this is, don't know what the

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Speaker 3: explanation is. And in that case, if a UFO enthusiast

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Speaker 3: is so inclined, they could say, ah, you don't know

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Speaker 3: what it is. Therefore proof of aliens confirmed.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, this reminds me too of you know, you can

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Speaker 1: also look at various signals that have been it seemed

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Speaker 1: to be observed, you know, coming from elsewhere in the cosmos,

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Speaker 1: sounds that have been recorded coming from the deep ocean,

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Speaker 1: things where you know, there's some there are some definitely

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Speaker 1: some strong hypops He's regarding these various anomalies. But at

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Speaker 1: the end of the day, can you one hundred percent

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Speaker 1: say what it is? Well, not necessarily, and therefore the

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Speaker 1: window is left cracked at least a little bit, maybe

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Speaker 1: cracked a lot further open, depending on your willingness to

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Speaker 1: interpret it a certain way. But it remains open somewhat

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Speaker 1: to some of these more far fetched explanations and then

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Speaker 1: you can go the extra mile and say, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: prove to me that the bloop is not the sound

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Speaker 1: of mighty Cuthule rising in the deep.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, elder gods. Disprove or accept. So I guess the

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Speaker 3: question from a reasoning standpoint is if you accept, and

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Speaker 3: I think most people will probably recognize this at some level,

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Speaker 3: you be kind of familiar with this, even beyond like

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Speaker 3: UFOs and stuff. This is just kind of true in life.

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Speaker 3: If you accept this pattern is generally true that evidence

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Speaker 3: one could hold up as viable in terms of proving

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Speaker 3: something weird. A weird explanation tends to exist in the

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Speaker 3: low information zone, whereas evidence in the high information zone

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Speaker 3: is very likely to end up pointing to a mundane explanation.

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Speaker 3: Should this pattern itself influence how you think about evidence

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Speaker 3: of alien life, I would say personally, I don't think

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Speaker 3: it should bias at all your starting assumptions about whether

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Speaker 3: aliens exist, because, as we said again early on, that's

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Speaker 3: that's just like not really within our search space for

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Speaker 3: evidence at least so far, so open question there. But

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Speaker 3: I think it probably should increase your resistance to putting

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Speaker 3: apparently anomalous but low information observations into the could be

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Speaker 3: alien's basket because you know this pattern exists. There's lots

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Speaker 3: of stuff like this. There are many analogies. But usually

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Speaker 3: the higher you are able to to turn up the

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Speaker 3: resolution on what you're looking at, the more information you

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Speaker 3: can add, the more context you can get, the more

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Speaker 3: you know, the sharper you can make the contours of

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Speaker 3: the image itself, the less likely it is that aliens

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Speaker 3: are going to seem like a good explanation, and the

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Speaker 3: more likely you are to be like, oh, that's a

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Speaker 3: plastic bag, or like oh, that's a recognizable animal. And

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Speaker 3: I think maybe that'll bring us to the case today,

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Speaker 3: a case of an underwater photograph that has been dubbed

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Speaker 3: the el tannin antenna, or maybe if we don't think

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Speaker 3: it's an antenna in the end, should we call it

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Speaker 3: like the eltannan object.

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Speaker 1: Ah, yeah, that's fair. I have wondered, if everyone keeps

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Speaker 1: calling it the el tann and antenna, why not just

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Speaker 1: call it the altena. It seems like that like the

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Speaker 1: natural direction to go in. But yeah, the this is

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Speaker 1: going to be a good one to discuss because it

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Speaker 1: is a thing that an image that that was completely

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Speaker 1: embraced by ufaist and sort of paranormal interpretations, and continues

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Speaker 1: to be held up in many circles as being this

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Speaker 1: kind of icon of the paranormal in proof of something,

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Speaker 1: you know what that's something is depending on your exact

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Speaker 1: case that you're making for like the secret nature of reality,

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Speaker 1: and yet at the same time we know exactly what

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Speaker 1: it is. I mean, experts who know their way around

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Speaker 1: deep sea organisms and the sorts of things you'd expect

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Speaker 1: to find in the deep ocean do not seem to

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Speaker 1: have had any They don't seem like they've had any

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Speaker 1: doubts about this for a number of decades. In fact,

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Speaker 1: it's not that long after the image was taken that

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Speaker 1: we have a pretty solid and convincing answer that everyone

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Speaker 1: seems to be satisfied with outside of the paranormal investigation world.

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Speaker 3: Yes, I would say to be as fair as possible

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Speaker 3: to the people who want a paranormal or alien explanation.

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Speaker 3: And you can't know for sure what it is because

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Speaker 3: like you can't go back and check it, Like this

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Speaker 3: was a sort of transient phenomenon somewhere in the bottom

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Speaker 3: of the ocean, so we can't go back to the

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Speaker 3: exact spot and say, oh, is it still there? And

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Speaker 3: check it? But I'd say ninety nine point nine percent

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Speaker 3: sure we know what it was. There's something else that

401
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Speaker 3: would explain this photo and would be found naturally in

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Speaker 3: the place where it was taken.

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Speaker 1: All right, let's roll out the story here. And the story,

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Speaker 1: I have to say, does start off with a number

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Speaker 1: of elements that already sound kind of supernatural, because the

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Speaker 1: story concerns the us NSL Tennant, an ice breaking cargo

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Speaker 1: vessel named after a star in the Draco constellation, and

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Speaker 1: I believe the name al Tanan derives from the Arabic

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Speaker 1: for the great serpent. That's all just too.

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Speaker 3: Good off to a good star.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, so it already leans into some supernatural ideas here, right,

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Speaker 1: But basically, back in nineteen sixty four it was working

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Speaker 1: as an oceanographic research vessel in the Antarctic Ocean, which

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Speaker 1: it did for more than a decade. The research crew

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Speaker 1: used it to gather a great deal of data, and

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Speaker 1: it was used to discover the hypothetical al Tannan impact

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Speaker 1: crater in nineteen eighty one via sediment cores collected earlier.

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Speaker 1: That's something to keep in mind with a lot of this,

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Speaker 1: like the data is gathered and then the data has

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Speaker 1: to be analyzed. It's not necessarily being analyzed on the ship.

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Speaker 1: It's bringing this back home and sometimes it's years later

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Speaker 1: that some particular find is made. Anyway, the al Tenant

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Speaker 1: impact crater, this was in the South Pacific and it

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Speaker 1: would have occurred somewhere in the neighborhood of two and

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Speaker 1: a half million years ago.

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Speaker 3: The impact that caused it would have been two and

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Speaker 3: a half million years ago.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, not the al Tannin, which then goes back

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Speaker 1: in time in a twilight zone scenario. The ship was

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Speaker 1: also used in part to discover Hollister Ridge, a group

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Speaker 1: of seamounts in nineteen sixty five, and the ship's work

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Speaker 1: also provided plenty of evidence to support the continental drift theory.

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Speaker 1: And I believe actual specimens of many marine organisms were

434
00:25:03,520 --> 00:25:06,639
Speaker 1: also collected. So to be clear, this is a hard working,

435
00:25:06,760 --> 00:25:07,960
Speaker 1: serious science vessel.

436
00:25:08,880 --> 00:25:12,320
Speaker 3: YEP gave us a lot of useful knowledge about the

437
00:25:12,359 --> 00:25:14,320
Speaker 3: seafloor and the Antarctic oceans.

438
00:25:14,560 --> 00:25:17,960
Speaker 1: Yeah. On August twenty ninth, nineteen sixty four, the crew

439
00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:21,800
Speaker 1: took sample cores and photographed the seabed west of Cape

440
00:25:21,880 --> 00:25:25,600
Speaker 1: Horn and it took a strange photo, like it is strange.

441
00:25:25,960 --> 00:25:27,159
Speaker 1: I mean, I look at it and I have to

442
00:25:27,200 --> 00:25:30,320
Speaker 1: admit this is weird looking. It's a photo of something

443
00:25:30,359 --> 00:25:32,640
Speaker 1: at a depth of about three nine hundred and four

444
00:25:32,680 --> 00:25:36,479
Speaker 1: meters or twelve eight hundred and eight feet. This is

445
00:25:36,880 --> 00:25:41,119
Speaker 1: the image of the so called El Tannan antenna. Now

446
00:25:41,119 --> 00:25:44,920
Speaker 1: I'll probably throw this image up on our various accounts

447
00:25:44,920 --> 00:25:47,840
Speaker 1: where listeners discuss episodes, but in general, you can look

448
00:25:47,880 --> 00:25:50,720
Speaker 1: up il tan and antenna on Wikipedia and you'll see

449
00:25:50,720 --> 00:25:55,240
Speaker 1: this kind of vertical image of the eltann And antenna.

450
00:25:55,320 --> 00:25:58,600
Speaker 1: But there's also this is like a apparently a zoom

451
00:25:58,640 --> 00:26:02,440
Speaker 1: in a crop of of a wider image, and this

452
00:26:02,480 --> 00:26:07,439
Speaker 1: one is less reproduced. But for instance, I found it

453
00:26:07,480 --> 00:26:12,480
Speaker 1: initially on a Twitter post by science writer Tyler Greenfield

454
00:26:12,560 --> 00:26:15,640
Speaker 1: from June of twenty twenty three, so you will see

455
00:26:15,640 --> 00:26:19,320
Speaker 1: it posted in various places. And this is this image

456
00:26:19,840 --> 00:26:21,720
Speaker 1: in particular, I believe it's from a book that I'm

457
00:26:21,760 --> 00:26:23,360
Speaker 1: going to reference here in just a bit.

458
00:26:24,119 --> 00:26:26,840
Speaker 3: If you've never seen it or are not able to

459
00:26:26,840 --> 00:26:29,679
Speaker 3: look it up right now, it looks like a pole

460
00:26:30,119 --> 00:26:33,640
Speaker 3: jutting up from the seafloor, straight up, and then it

461
00:26:33,720 --> 00:26:38,960
Speaker 3: has radial poles that extend out from the central pole

462
00:26:39,080 --> 00:26:43,520
Speaker 3: at ninety degree angles. So it does look very strange

463
00:26:43,640 --> 00:26:45,879
Speaker 3: for something you would see on the seafloor.

464
00:26:46,440 --> 00:26:48,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, it kind of like the image itself is kind

465
00:26:48,800 --> 00:26:50,400
Speaker 1: of haunting because it's all, you know, black and white.

466
00:26:50,400 --> 00:26:52,480
Speaker 1: It kind of looks like a reverse negative image of

467
00:26:52,480 --> 00:26:56,679
Speaker 1: a popcorn ceiling, only upside down. This is the seafloor

468
00:26:57,000 --> 00:27:00,800
Speaker 1: with this strange multi armed antenna like structure or perhaps

469
00:27:00,840 --> 00:27:03,760
Speaker 1: weather vane like or kind of like a surrealist street

470
00:27:03,840 --> 00:27:07,600
Speaker 1: sign has those big gum knobs on the end that

471
00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:09,600
Speaker 1: you know, kind of reminds you of like a jacks

472
00:27:10,400 --> 00:27:14,680
Speaker 1: that you know, yeah you're throwing and yeah, I mean,

473
00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:17,239
Speaker 1: if you if you want to see an antenna, you know,

474
00:27:17,440 --> 00:27:19,719
Speaker 1: you might say, well, this, this looks like an antenna,

475
00:27:19,760 --> 00:27:23,240
Speaker 1: not necessarily an antenna I've seen before, but I guess

476
00:27:23,280 --> 00:27:25,200
Speaker 1: you could make that case because on the other hand,

477
00:27:25,600 --> 00:27:29,199
Speaker 1: I don't think this really looks like human technology. But

478
00:27:29,280 --> 00:27:31,000
Speaker 1: at the same time, there do appear to be right

479
00:27:31,040 --> 00:27:33,479
Speaker 1: angles in the positioning of the arms relative to its

480
00:27:33,520 --> 00:27:36,280
Speaker 1: trunk or its spine, and so you can see why

481
00:27:36,320 --> 00:27:39,360
Speaker 1: this image might elicit mystery in many viewers.

482
00:27:39,840 --> 00:27:44,920
Speaker 3: Now it's interesting that the comparison to technology goes back

483
00:27:44,960 --> 00:27:49,480
Speaker 3: to the very first published article about this. This actually

484
00:27:50,040 --> 00:27:52,399
Speaker 3: is so I could not find the text of the

485
00:27:52,440 --> 00:27:56,760
Speaker 3: original article in full, but I found it reproduced in

486
00:27:57,000 --> 00:27:59,840
Speaker 3: a very good article from the Fourteen Times by Peter

487
00:28:00,000 --> 00:28:03,840
Speaker 3: Brooksmith from May two thousand and four called the Eltannan Enigma.

488
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:07,600
Speaker 3: This is a very good skeptical article that pretty much

489
00:28:07,640 --> 00:28:10,480
Speaker 3: lays out the whole history of the case and tells

490
00:28:10,520 --> 00:28:13,960
Speaker 3: about the various interpretations as well as gives the almost

491
00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:18,560
Speaker 3: certain correct mundane explanation of what this is. But in

492
00:28:18,600 --> 00:28:23,560
Speaker 3: this article Brooksmith finds and reproduces the original article from

493
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:27,440
Speaker 3: the New Zealand Herald from December nineteen sixty four called

494
00:28:27,560 --> 00:28:31,960
Speaker 3: Puzzle Picture from Seabed, which was published apparently right after

495
00:28:32,359 --> 00:28:37,040
Speaker 3: the Eltannan came into Auckland and was I guess processing

496
00:28:37,119 --> 00:28:42,120
Speaker 3: or analyzing some of its research materials, And so it's

497
00:28:42,280 --> 00:28:44,360
Speaker 3: docked here in New Zealand, and we get this New

498
00:28:44,440 --> 00:28:49,000
Speaker 3: Zealand News article which says, among other things, quote the photograph,

499
00:28:49,040 --> 00:28:52,720
Speaker 3: which to a layman shows something like a complex radio

500
00:28:52,880 --> 00:28:55,840
Speaker 3: aerial jutting out of the mud bottom, was taken on

501
00:28:55,880 --> 00:28:59,240
Speaker 3: August twenty nine by a submarine camera. The camera is

502
00:28:59,280 --> 00:29:02,360
Speaker 3: housed in a cylinder pulled along by a cable from

503
00:29:02,360 --> 00:29:05,640
Speaker 3: the ship. It bounces along the seabed, taking pictures at

504
00:29:05,640 --> 00:29:10,440
Speaker 3: regular intervals. Doctor Thomas Hopkins, senior marine biologist on board

505
00:29:10,440 --> 00:29:14,440
Speaker 3: who specializes in plankton studies, says the object could hardly

506
00:29:14,480 --> 00:29:17,920
Speaker 3: be a plant. Quote at that depth there is no light,

507
00:29:18,040 --> 00:29:21,680
Speaker 3: so photosynthesis could not take place and plants could not live.

508
00:29:22,280 --> 00:29:24,880
Speaker 3: If it is some strange choral formation, then no one

509
00:29:24,920 --> 00:29:28,520
Speaker 3: on board has ever heard about it before. Doctor Hopkins,

510
00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:31,520
Speaker 3: a graduate of the University of Southern California, said the

511
00:29:31,560 --> 00:29:34,600
Speaker 3: ship's photographer had been thoroughly questioned on how he had

512
00:29:34,640 --> 00:29:38,280
Speaker 3: developed the photograph. However, everyone was certain the picture was

513
00:29:38,360 --> 00:29:41,360
Speaker 3: not faked. I wouldn't like to say that the thing

514
00:29:41,440 --> 00:29:44,120
Speaker 3: is man made, because this brings up the problem of

515
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:46,720
Speaker 3: how one would get it there, he says. But it's

516
00:29:46,760 --> 00:29:50,280
Speaker 3: fairly symmetrical, and the offshoots are all ninety degrees apart.

517
00:29:50,640 --> 00:29:53,120
Speaker 3: This is why it has been argued over for so long.

518
00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:55,479
Speaker 3: And then the article goes on to say the object

519
00:29:55,560 --> 00:29:59,400
Speaker 3: is probably about sixty centimeters high or about two feet high.

520
00:29:59,400 --> 00:30:02,920
Speaker 3: The photograph is being sent for analysis to some I

521
00:30:02,920 --> 00:30:06,200
Speaker 3: think some labs or the University of Southern California, and

522
00:30:06,280 --> 00:30:08,600
Speaker 3: that's about the end of it. But ooh, it's funny

523
00:30:08,600 --> 00:30:13,120
Speaker 3: that while nowhere in the article is it actually suggested

524
00:30:13,200 --> 00:30:18,800
Speaker 3: in seriousness that this object is alien or anything like that.

525
00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:24,240
Speaker 3: I think they accidentally laid the groundwork for that kind

526
00:30:24,280 --> 00:30:28,720
Speaker 3: of mythology to evolve, because there is kind of offhanded

527
00:30:28,880 --> 00:30:33,320
Speaker 3: suggestion of ruling out mundane explanations like couldn't be a

528
00:30:33,320 --> 00:30:35,800
Speaker 3: plant because you know, no light gets down there, so

529
00:30:36,320 --> 00:30:40,080
Speaker 3: that almost sounds too you know, a very a very

530
00:30:40,200 --> 00:30:43,920
Speaker 3: enthusiastic pro UFO type reader saying like, oh, well, then

531
00:30:44,000 --> 00:30:47,080
Speaker 3: it couldn't be organic at all. And then you say, well,

532
00:30:47,120 --> 00:30:49,800
Speaker 3: it couldn't be human made because you know, how would

533
00:30:49,840 --> 00:30:51,600
Speaker 3: you get it down to the bottom of the ocean.

534
00:30:51,640 --> 00:30:54,120
Speaker 3: And somebody could say that that's right, couldn't be human,

535
00:30:54,200 --> 00:30:57,280
Speaker 3: couldn't be couldn't be a plant, so it couldn't be organic. So,

536
00:30:57,680 --> 00:30:58,960
Speaker 3: I mean, what's left.

537
00:30:59,400 --> 00:31:01,600
Speaker 1: So just as the image has been taken, it's hit

538
00:31:01,640 --> 00:31:04,960
Speaker 1: the mainstream presses, and yes, at this point it is

539
00:31:05,120 --> 00:31:09,680
Speaker 1: picked up by the ufology and sort of fringe segment

540
00:31:10,040 --> 00:31:13,400
Speaker 1: of the population, and you know, it seems I don't

541
00:31:13,400 --> 00:31:15,080
Speaker 1: know if this was the case with you, Joe. It

542
00:31:15,080 --> 00:31:17,720
Speaker 1: seems like there might be a lot of this sort

543
00:31:17,720 --> 00:31:21,440
Speaker 1: of material, especially from like the mid to late sixties

544
00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:26,160
Speaker 1: that perhaps just hasn't survived, that isn't archive, that hasn't

545
00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:29,400
Speaker 1: been recorded, or it has where the information has been

546
00:31:29,440 --> 00:31:35,560
Speaker 1: reprinted and reused. Maybe the attribution system involved there isn't

547
00:31:35,600 --> 00:31:38,440
Speaker 1: as rigorous as you would find and like scientific reporting

548
00:31:38,480 --> 00:31:39,120
Speaker 1: and so forth.

549
00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:44,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I was wondering about how many things

550
00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:47,720
Speaker 3: there are like this photo that just like nobody ever

551
00:31:47,920 --> 00:31:51,600
Speaker 3: noticed and attached any mythology to, you know, like they

552
00:31:51,680 --> 00:31:57,880
Speaker 3: just like never became a nucleation point for lore. But

553
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:00,960
Speaker 3: there are just like a weird poo out there that

554
00:32:01,080 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 3: was taken maybe published in a newspaper article and then

555
00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:05,680
Speaker 3: forgotten like it.

556
00:32:05,840 --> 00:32:06,000
Speaker 2: You know.

557
00:32:06,080 --> 00:32:08,440
Speaker 3: So this originally was just published in a New Zealand

558
00:32:08,520 --> 00:32:11,400
Speaker 3: Herald article. I don't know how many people read that,

559
00:32:11,600 --> 00:32:16,000
Speaker 3: but the right people saw it and found out about it,

560
00:32:16,080 --> 00:32:20,920
Speaker 3: and that led to a whole burgeoning mythology and to

561
00:32:21,040 --> 00:32:25,120
Speaker 3: its inclusion and books and articles about UFOs and the

562
00:32:25,160 --> 00:32:26,440
Speaker 3: paranormal and so forth.

563
00:32:26,920 --> 00:32:29,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it seems to sort of maybe make the

564
00:32:29,200 --> 00:32:31,840
Speaker 1: rounds a little bit, but it definitely gets picked up

565
00:32:32,560 --> 00:32:35,080
Speaker 1: in what, at least in my research, was the earliest

566
00:32:35,080 --> 00:32:37,840
Speaker 1: book reference that I could actually like pull up on

567
00:32:37,920 --> 00:32:44,320
Speaker 1: my end, the earliest book reference to the Eltannan antenna.

568
00:32:44,600 --> 00:32:47,280
Speaker 1: And this is this would stem from I believe nineteen

569
00:32:47,360 --> 00:32:53,400
Speaker 1: sixty eight. The book is Harmonic thirty three by Bruce Cathy,

570
00:32:53,880 --> 00:32:56,680
Speaker 1: a New Zealand airline pilot who went on to write

571
00:32:56,720 --> 00:33:01,120
Speaker 1: seven books about UFOs, as well as a supposed world

572
00:33:01,360 --> 00:33:05,560
Speaker 1: energy grid the powers flying saucers and permits the detonation

573
00:33:05,640 --> 00:33:09,080
Speaker 1: of atomic explosions, but only at particular juncture points and

574
00:33:09,120 --> 00:33:10,320
Speaker 1: at specific times.

575
00:33:10,720 --> 00:33:14,760
Speaker 3: Kathy's work is explored extensively in this article in the

576
00:33:14,800 --> 00:33:17,600
Speaker 3: fourteen Times from two thousand and four by brook Smith,

577
00:33:18,120 --> 00:33:24,360
Speaker 3: and it is what's the right word, I guess just complex.

578
00:33:24,480 --> 00:33:28,280
Speaker 3: There is a lot of maps and annotation and reading

579
00:33:28,360 --> 00:33:34,680
Speaker 3: deeply into systems of geographical coordinates and making plots a

580
00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:37,440
Speaker 3: sort of a pattern seeking run amock.

581
00:33:38,080 --> 00:33:41,800
Speaker 1: Yeah. What I gather is that Bruce Cathy was an intelligent,

582
00:33:42,240 --> 00:33:46,160
Speaker 1: determined man who, having had a paranormal encounter of his own,

583
00:33:46,800 --> 00:33:50,400
Speaker 1: attempted to find some meaning and pattern in alleged sightings

584
00:33:50,440 --> 00:33:53,640
Speaker 1: around the world, you know, creating maps, drawing these lines,

585
00:33:54,520 --> 00:33:58,320
Speaker 1: working out different coordinates, and you know, working with descriptions

586
00:33:58,320 --> 00:34:01,520
Speaker 1: of things that seem like antennae, is either antennas that

587
00:34:01,600 --> 00:34:05,840
Speaker 1: are described on UFOs or in this case, an image

588
00:34:05,840 --> 00:34:09,440
Speaker 1: of something that can be interpreted as an antenna. The problem,

589
00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:11,840
Speaker 1: of course, is that the whole enterprise is constructed with

590
00:34:11,960 --> 00:34:15,480
Speaker 1: narrow focus and a preconceived conclusion, you know, based in

591
00:34:15,560 --> 00:34:18,640
Speaker 1: part in citing subjective experiences and also the sort of

592
00:34:19,200 --> 00:34:23,120
Speaker 1: low res information. So anyway, the first edition of this

593
00:34:23,160 --> 00:34:25,560
Speaker 1: book comes out, I believe in nineteen sixty eight, but

594
00:34:25,600 --> 00:34:29,040
Speaker 1: then the nineteen seventy two or nineteen seventy three reprint

595
00:34:29,080 --> 00:34:33,120
Speaker 1: of the book actually features that photograph of the altanna

596
00:34:33,120 --> 00:34:36,240
Speaker 1: and antenna on the cover, you know, with some added

597
00:34:36,560 --> 00:34:39,360
Speaker 1: you know, jazzy title design and like a blue tint,

598
00:34:39,719 --> 00:34:42,600
Speaker 1: and it is very eye catching, and I think it's

599
00:34:42,640 --> 00:34:45,680
Speaker 1: important that eye catching aspect of this cover in this illustration.

600
00:34:45,760 --> 00:34:49,040
Speaker 1: I think it's important because you have to imagine that

601
00:34:49,080 --> 00:34:51,360
Speaker 1: this book, you know, certainly it's going to connect with

602
00:34:51,440 --> 00:34:55,360
Speaker 1: various individuals that are interested in the paranormal and UFOs

603
00:34:55,400 --> 00:34:57,960
Speaker 1: and so forth, but also it's just going to be

604
00:34:57,960 --> 00:35:00,560
Speaker 1: on the shelf or or you know, in the layout

605
00:35:01,239 --> 00:35:04,040
Speaker 1: perhaps in a magazine with other books of this nature.

606
00:35:04,480 --> 00:35:06,920
Speaker 1: And in a sense you can imagine how it becomes

607
00:35:06,960 --> 00:35:10,000
Speaker 1: solidified as a symbol, you know, as one of these

608
00:35:10,000 --> 00:35:13,760
Speaker 1: sort of articles of faith in the paranormal, alongside things

609
00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:18,080
Speaker 1: like famous UFO sightings or illustrations, images of stone hinge

610
00:35:18,120 --> 00:35:18,800
Speaker 1: and so forth.

611
00:35:19,360 --> 00:35:24,200
Speaker 3: Ah, So it's not just one instrumental piece of evidence

612
00:35:24,280 --> 00:35:27,600
Speaker 3: that helps prove your theory about UFOs and alien contact

613
00:35:27,640 --> 00:35:30,600
Speaker 3: and everything, but it takes on a meaning. It has

614
00:35:30,600 --> 00:35:34,200
Speaker 3: a kind of significance where it might emotionally feel like

615
00:35:34,280 --> 00:35:38,120
Speaker 3: if this particular piece of evidence were explained as something

616
00:35:38,160 --> 00:35:41,279
Speaker 3: actually mundane, it would kind of be an insult to

617
00:35:41,360 --> 00:35:42,320
Speaker 3: the whole project.

618
00:35:42,880 --> 00:35:45,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, but also I think, just I don't know, part

619
00:35:45,280 --> 00:35:47,880
Speaker 1: of this is me going back to like being in

620
00:35:48,000 --> 00:35:50,239
Speaker 1: you know, being in stores, whether like they're you know,

621
00:35:50,520 --> 00:35:53,279
Speaker 1: movies or albums. You know, even if it's not an

622
00:35:53,320 --> 00:35:55,680
Speaker 1: album that you've listened to or a book you've read

623
00:35:55,800 --> 00:35:58,759
Speaker 1: or a movie you've seen, like that poster art being

624
00:35:58,800 --> 00:36:02,760
Speaker 1: displayed among all the other that album cover being displayed

625
00:36:02,800 --> 00:36:05,600
Speaker 1: among all the others, there's kind of this codifying effect

626
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:09,719
Speaker 1: I feel, Yeah, but at any rate, Yeah, it's no

627
00:36:09,840 --> 00:36:12,279
Speaker 1: accident though that the altan and antenna is on the

628
00:36:12,320 --> 00:36:14,680
Speaker 1: cover there, because it does seem kind of like key

629
00:36:14,760 --> 00:36:18,839
Speaker 1: to his main ideas here. In particular, in the book,

630
00:36:18,880 --> 00:36:23,160
Speaker 1: he describes the altan and antenna and briefly explains why

631
00:36:23,200 --> 00:36:26,160
Speaker 1: he thinks humans couldn't have made it, and doesn't even

632
00:36:26,239 --> 00:36:29,279
Speaker 1: mention the possibility of organic origin even to dispute it,

633
00:36:29,640 --> 00:36:32,440
Speaker 1: like it doesn't even say anything like, well, some people

634
00:36:32,440 --> 00:36:34,759
Speaker 1: think this might be an organism, but it's not, or

635
00:36:34,760 --> 00:36:36,920
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like an organism. There's none of that.

636
00:36:37,400 --> 00:36:40,160
Speaker 1: He describes it as a quote bit of iron mungery

637
00:36:40,880 --> 00:36:43,760
Speaker 1: unquote that no humans could have possibly placed.

638
00:36:44,440 --> 00:36:47,400
Speaker 3: Okay, so as he presents, it's just axiomatic. This is

639
00:36:47,440 --> 00:36:50,400
Speaker 3: made of metal, and it's some piece of technology. And

640
00:36:50,440 --> 00:36:53,239
Speaker 3: the question is could it be human or must it

641
00:36:53,280 --> 00:36:55,880
Speaker 3: be other than human? And here's the argument why it

642
00:36:55,920 --> 00:36:56,960
Speaker 3: could not be human?

643
00:36:57,640 --> 00:37:00,720
Speaker 1: Right he In the book, he writes the following quote,

644
00:37:00,880 --> 00:37:03,080
Speaker 1: it would be interesting to know what the Americans have

645
00:37:03,160 --> 00:37:05,960
Speaker 1: made of that picture and whether any attempt has been

646
00:37:05,960 --> 00:37:09,560
Speaker 1: made to salvage the strange object they photographed by accident

647
00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:14,240
Speaker 1: in view of my earlier sighting in the Capara Harbor.

648
00:37:14,520 --> 00:37:17,000
Speaker 1: I was willing to accept that the aerial had been

649
00:37:17,000 --> 00:37:22,359
Speaker 1: placed there by an unidentified submarine object or USO. Can

650
00:37:22,400 --> 00:37:23,880
Speaker 1: you offer a better explanation.

651
00:37:25,760 --> 00:37:29,840
Speaker 3: Some of the writers who prefer an alien explanation specifically

652
00:37:30,400 --> 00:37:33,600
Speaker 3: cite the claim that, well, it was too far down

653
00:37:33,800 --> 00:37:37,400
Speaker 3: on the bottom of the ocean for a human made submarine,

654
00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:40,799
Speaker 3: any human made submarine at that time, to have deposited it.

655
00:37:41,000 --> 00:37:44,480
Speaker 3: Submarines couldn't go that deep. And I don't want to

656
00:37:45,040 --> 00:37:47,440
Speaker 3: I'm not mocking here or anything, but I mean I

657
00:37:47,520 --> 00:37:49,920
Speaker 3: do kind of think could you not think of another

658
00:37:50,120 --> 00:37:53,240
Speaker 3: way that, like a piece of metal could made by humans,

659
00:37:53,280 --> 00:37:55,200
Speaker 3: could have gotten to the bottom of the ocean other

660
00:37:55,239 --> 00:37:58,239
Speaker 3: than being deposited by a deep sea submersible.

661
00:37:58,960 --> 00:38:00,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like there's a rather obvious way to

662
00:38:00,880 --> 00:38:01,760
Speaker 1: get something down.

663
00:38:01,600 --> 00:38:03,799
Speaker 3: There, right, Otherwise you'd have to say the same thing

664
00:38:03,840 --> 00:38:07,080
Speaker 3: about like metal drums and barrels and stuff that end

665
00:38:07,160 --> 00:38:09,240
Speaker 3: up at the bottom of the ocean. I mean, there's gravity,

666
00:38:09,320 --> 00:38:11,880
Speaker 3: things can fall to the bottom. I guess there is

667
00:38:12,160 --> 00:38:15,839
Speaker 3: some reasoning militating against this that says, well, but it's

668
00:38:15,840 --> 00:38:18,600
Speaker 3: standing upright though. I guess you could explain that just

669
00:38:18,640 --> 00:38:20,520
Speaker 3: by like it being weighted a certain way.

670
00:38:21,440 --> 00:38:26,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. For Kathy, his argument seems to be, well, okay,

671
00:38:26,600 --> 00:38:29,120
Speaker 1: you could probably get some sort of submersible down there,

672
00:38:29,239 --> 00:38:31,360
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't be able to do this kind of work.

673
00:38:31,440 --> 00:38:36,880
Speaker 1: So still I agree. It seems like it doesn't seem

674
00:38:36,920 --> 00:38:40,600
Speaker 1: like that logic would necessarily rule it out. But anyway,

675
00:38:40,640 --> 00:38:43,040
Speaker 1: elsewhere in the book, he frequently comes back to the

676
00:38:43,160 --> 00:38:47,000
Speaker 1: alten and antenna as being part of this elaborate global

677
00:38:47,120 --> 00:38:50,080
Speaker 1: energy grid, and he also connects the knobs or its

678
00:38:50,120 --> 00:38:53,600
Speaker 1: apparent knobs, two objects described on the bottoms of UFOs.

679
00:38:54,239 --> 00:39:00,000
Speaker 1: So if you were encountering images of this artifact, this object,

680
00:39:00,200 --> 00:39:04,040
Speaker 1: or this antenna in this book, or in books inspired

681
00:39:04,080 --> 00:39:08,080
Speaker 1: by it, or in the same sort of realm, could

682
00:39:08,120 --> 00:39:10,120
Speaker 1: you might well think, well, this is this is truly

683
00:39:10,120 --> 00:39:13,279
Speaker 1: a mystery, and we've got to go back there and

684
00:39:13,320 --> 00:39:16,359
Speaker 1: find it someday, or maybe we won't find it because

685
00:39:16,400 --> 00:39:19,719
Speaker 1: someone else has already come and and and harvested it,

686
00:39:19,760 --> 00:39:23,040
Speaker 1: et cetera. So you can imagine how this kind of

687
00:39:23,040 --> 00:39:27,799
Speaker 1: takes up and takes up this energy and becomes this again,

688
00:39:27,880 --> 00:39:30,000
Speaker 1: this kind of like icon within the realm of like

689
00:39:30,080 --> 00:39:31,759
Speaker 1: paranormal UFO investigation.

690
00:39:32,719 --> 00:39:37,320
Speaker 3: But as we have teased now multiple times, there's really

691
00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:40,520
Speaker 3: not much of a question anymore what it actually is.

692
00:39:40,719 --> 00:39:44,279
Speaker 3: And this is the result of marine biologists weighing.

693
00:39:44,000 --> 00:39:47,359
Speaker 1: In that's right. And that's one of the key things

694
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:50,520
Speaker 1: about this one is that if you're looking at individuals

695
00:39:50,560 --> 00:39:55,000
Speaker 1: that actually have you know, the expertise regarding things that

696
00:39:55,200 --> 00:39:58,120
Speaker 1: might appear on the ocean floor in this part of

697
00:39:58,120 --> 00:40:00,640
Speaker 1: the world, Yeah, there seems to be no and there

698
00:40:00,680 --> 00:40:05,360
Speaker 1: hasn't been any mystery for decades and decades. In particular,

699
00:40:07,040 --> 00:40:10,040
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier how there's the horizontal version of the

700
00:40:10,040 --> 00:40:12,720
Speaker 1: image and then there's this wider version of the image

701
00:40:12,719 --> 00:40:17,320
Speaker 1: that hasn't been cropped. This appears in a nineteen seventy

702
00:40:17,400 --> 00:40:21,080
Speaker 1: one book titled The Face of the Deep. This was

703
00:40:21,080 --> 00:40:25,880
Speaker 1: published by Oxford University Press and was authored by Bruce C.

704
00:40:26,040 --> 00:40:29,319
Speaker 1: Heasen and Charles D. Hollister. This book was not a

705
00:40:30,120 --> 00:40:33,680
Speaker 1: UFOology work, but rather set out to present quote, a

706
00:40:33,719 --> 00:40:36,440
Speaker 1: selection of the best photographs of the deep sea floor

707
00:40:36,440 --> 00:40:39,919
Speaker 1: for you to look at and contemplate, which maybe wasn't

708
00:40:39,920 --> 00:40:44,120
Speaker 1: taking it far enough because Bruce Cathy and others were

709
00:40:44,120 --> 00:40:47,920
Speaker 1: certainly contemplating it, but they were going off an entirely

710
00:40:47,920 --> 00:40:50,239
Speaker 1: different direction. In the book, they note that about it,

711
00:40:50,280 --> 00:40:52,440
Speaker 1: one third of the photographs in the book were obtained

712
00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:56,200
Speaker 1: quote over the past few years in Antarctic waters by

713
00:40:56,239 --> 00:40:59,880
Speaker 1: the National Science Foundation's research ship el Tatnan.

714
00:41:00,800 --> 00:41:02,680
Speaker 3: All Right, so what do they say about the photo

715
00:41:02,719 --> 00:41:03,160
Speaker 3: in question?

716
00:41:03,960 --> 00:41:07,640
Speaker 1: All right, Well, the caption for the photo and alone says,

717
00:41:08,080 --> 00:41:13,000
Speaker 1: note antenna like sponge clataisa in the lower photograph.

718
00:41:13,400 --> 00:41:15,400
Speaker 3: All right, So not only are they noting this is

719
00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:19,239
Speaker 3: an animal, it is a sponge, they specify a genus name,

720
00:41:19,280 --> 00:41:23,200
Speaker 3: which was at the time Clatterresa. Now, as a kind

721
00:41:23,200 --> 00:41:26,400
Speaker 3: of confusing note, it seems to me that the same

722
00:41:26,480 --> 00:41:29,719
Speaker 3: animal they're talking about, this type of sponge, was at

723
00:41:29,760 --> 00:41:32,920
Speaker 3: the time taxonomized in the genus Clatterresa. So it was

724
00:41:32,960 --> 00:41:37,880
Speaker 3: known as Clatterresa concretions. But now the same species is

725
00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:42,880
Speaker 3: sorted into a different genus and it's known as Chondrocladia concretions.

726
00:41:43,400 --> 00:41:45,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this sort of thing's fairly common.

727
00:41:45,239 --> 00:41:49,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, things get differently taxonomized when they get further studied.

728
00:41:50,160 --> 00:41:52,200
Speaker 1: Now, elsewhere in the book The Face of the Deep,

729
00:41:52,280 --> 00:41:55,480
Speaker 1: the authors go into a little more detail. They're right. Quote,

730
00:41:55,719 --> 00:41:59,600
Speaker 1: while the bath sponges are limited to the warmest shallow

731
00:41:59,640 --> 00:42:02,800
Speaker 1: water of the continental shelf. A few of their bizarre

732
00:42:02,840 --> 00:42:06,919
Speaker 1: relatives are rather commonly found in the deep sea. Clatteriza,

733
00:42:07,040 --> 00:42:10,839
Speaker 1: A particularly dramatic one which sometimes resembles a space age

734
00:42:10,880 --> 00:42:15,080
Speaker 1: microwave antenna, was not uncommon in the early dredge halls

735
00:42:15,320 --> 00:42:22,120
Speaker 1: of Challenger and Blake. Alexander Agassi observed that quote they

736
00:42:22,120 --> 00:42:25,960
Speaker 1: are sponges with a long stem ending in ramifying roots

737
00:42:26,360 --> 00:42:29,880
Speaker 1: sunk deeply in the mud. The stem has nodes with

738
00:42:30,080 --> 00:42:34,360
Speaker 1: four to six clublike appendages. They evidently cover like Bush's

739
00:42:34,440 --> 00:42:37,960
Speaker 1: extensive tracts of the bottom. Now, a couple of notes

740
00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:42,200
Speaker 1: here about what they're referring to. Alexander Agassi lived eighteen

741
00:42:42,280 --> 00:42:44,360
Speaker 1: thirty five through nineteen ten, and he was a noted

742
00:42:44,360 --> 00:42:48,560
Speaker 1: Swiss American scientist and inventor. He was also a rather

743
00:42:48,640 --> 00:42:52,359
Speaker 1: infamous supporter of scientific racism, but his contributions in non

744
00:42:52,480 --> 00:42:56,240
Speaker 1: human biology and geology of the time seem pretty sound.

745
00:42:56,880 --> 00:43:00,359
Speaker 3: And the Challenger there would be referring to the Challenger expedition,

746
00:43:00,480 --> 00:43:02,080
Speaker 3: which we've talked about on the show before. I think

747
00:43:02,120 --> 00:43:05,040
Speaker 3: maybe we talked about it in the context of, like

748
00:43:05,440 --> 00:43:07,080
Speaker 3: maybe William beebe or something.

749
00:43:07,719 --> 00:43:11,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so some deep sea exploration dredging up

750
00:43:11,920 --> 00:43:13,920
Speaker 1: life forms and so forth from the bottom.

751
00:43:14,320 --> 00:43:16,560
Speaker 3: Right, But this would have been in the nineteenth century,

752
00:43:16,640 --> 00:43:18,920
Speaker 3: so like a long time ago. But they're in nineteenth

753
00:43:18,960 --> 00:43:23,280
Speaker 3: century ships like running sort of devices along the seafloor

754
00:43:23,320 --> 00:43:25,680
Speaker 3: to try to pull things up and see what's down there.

755
00:43:26,120 --> 00:43:29,640
Speaker 1: Yeah. So at this point, this particular species had been

756
00:43:29,680 --> 00:43:33,040
Speaker 1: known about for decades. It was this was not like, oh,

757
00:43:33,239 --> 00:43:36,160
Speaker 1: this is some unknown creature. No, they when people wh

758
00:43:36,200 --> 00:43:38,680
Speaker 1: knew what they were talking about looked at it, they

759
00:43:38,719 --> 00:43:42,520
Speaker 1: were able to match it up with some actual organisms

760
00:43:42,760 --> 00:43:43,600
Speaker 1: in the record book.

761
00:43:44,000 --> 00:43:47,120
Speaker 3: Right, Well, people who knew about deep sea sponges would

762
00:43:47,120 --> 00:43:49,560
Speaker 3: know what they were looking at. But to the average person,

763
00:43:49,640 --> 00:43:51,919
Speaker 3: it just looks like a really weird shape that could

764
00:43:51,920 --> 00:43:54,600
Speaker 3: well be in antenna. Like you wouldn't expect any just

765
00:43:54,640 --> 00:43:57,920
Speaker 3: the regular person off the street to recognize this species

766
00:43:57,960 --> 00:43:59,360
Speaker 3: of sponge.

767
00:43:58,960 --> 00:44:01,080
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, this is special information to be it to

768
00:44:01,080 --> 00:44:03,320
Speaker 1: be clear. Now, in the book, they note that the

769
00:44:03,800 --> 00:44:06,600
Speaker 1: photo in question, in a zoomed in horizontal version, is

770
00:44:06,719 --> 00:44:10,800
Speaker 1: of quote a bizarre antenna like abysal sponge, which quote

771
00:44:11,040 --> 00:44:16,360
Speaker 1: stands erect towering over the manganese nodules in the bellings

772
00:44:16,400 --> 00:44:20,360
Speaker 1: Housen basin South Pacific. There were apparently sixteen different images

773
00:44:20,360 --> 00:44:23,000
Speaker 1: from this location. And again, remember we were talking about

774
00:44:23,000 --> 00:44:24,600
Speaker 1: how those images were taken. They were kind of like

775
00:44:24,640 --> 00:44:30,120
Speaker 1: fired off automatically by this large capsule being pulled at

776
00:44:30,160 --> 00:44:34,160
Speaker 1: depth behind the ship. But of those sixteen images, only

777
00:44:34,239 --> 00:44:36,320
Speaker 1: one image captured this sponge.

778
00:44:36,760 --> 00:44:40,200
Speaker 3: Now it's mentioned that the sponge is often found in

779
00:44:40,280 --> 00:44:43,560
Speaker 3: sort of little forests on the seafloor where there would

780
00:44:43,600 --> 00:44:46,879
Speaker 3: be others of the same type surrounding it. In this case,

781
00:44:46,920 --> 00:44:49,439
Speaker 3: it was standing alone, and I wonder how it would

782
00:44:49,480 --> 00:44:52,480
Speaker 3: have been received differently if there were other similarly shaped

783
00:44:52,520 --> 00:44:53,759
Speaker 3: objects all around it.

784
00:44:54,160 --> 00:44:56,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an interesting question because on one hand, you

785
00:44:56,320 --> 00:44:59,480
Speaker 1: can imagine exactly the same thing occurring. But you could

786
00:44:59,480 --> 00:45:02,839
Speaker 1: also make it argument that yes, by standing alone and

787
00:45:02,880 --> 00:45:07,320
Speaker 1: you know, standing out on the seafloor scape around it

788
00:45:07,360 --> 00:45:10,799
Speaker 1: made it more iconic, made it more mysterious seeming. But

789
00:45:10,880 --> 00:45:13,640
Speaker 1: the authors here note that while the Challenger and Blake

790
00:45:13,719 --> 00:45:18,000
Speaker 1: expeditions dredged in an area with considerably more of these, yeah,

791
00:45:18,040 --> 00:45:21,239
Speaker 1: this one does seem to have stood alone. Agacy drew

792
00:45:21,320 --> 00:45:26,920
Speaker 1: the sponge in illustrations with drooping or arching limbs curved

793
00:45:26,960 --> 00:45:30,000
Speaker 1: in either case, while this image shows the organism erect

794
00:45:30,239 --> 00:45:34,120
Speaker 1: with horizontally positioned appendages. They also note that quote the

795
00:45:34,160 --> 00:45:36,520
Speaker 1: tops of the appendages show up so brightly in the

796
00:45:36,520 --> 00:45:39,480
Speaker 1: photographs to suggest they are either of an extremely light

797
00:45:39,560 --> 00:45:44,879
Speaker 1: color or that they phosphores So I think that's that's

798
00:45:45,120 --> 00:45:47,400
Speaker 1: a good point. We'll probably come back to that. But

799
00:45:48,239 --> 00:45:51,319
Speaker 1: also this whole idea of well, Agasy drew it one

800
00:45:51,360 --> 00:45:53,800
Speaker 1: way and it looks a different way. I mean that

801
00:45:53,800 --> 00:45:55,440
Speaker 1: that pretty much matches up with a lot of what

802
00:45:55,480 --> 00:45:58,880
Speaker 1: we've talked about regarding deep sea organisms. If you dredge

803
00:45:58,880 --> 00:46:01,399
Speaker 1: them up for the deep or pull them up even

804
00:46:01,440 --> 00:46:05,360
Speaker 1: in even in like a cage or something, there's a

805
00:46:05,400 --> 00:46:07,240
Speaker 1: lot that can happen on its way to the surface.

806
00:46:07,560 --> 00:46:10,279
Speaker 1: You're taking it out of one environment and bring it

807
00:46:10,320 --> 00:46:13,160
Speaker 1: into a drastically different one. All sorts of things can

808
00:46:13,200 --> 00:46:18,600
Speaker 1: occur to you, you know, decompression, explosions and so forth.

809
00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:21,640
Speaker 1: So it's not that crazy to imagine that, well, it

810
00:46:21,719 --> 00:46:23,719
Speaker 1: looked different once they had dredged it up from the

811
00:46:23,719 --> 00:46:26,359
Speaker 1: bottom as opposed to how it is positioned in its

812
00:46:26,440 --> 00:46:27,280
Speaker 1: natural habitat.

813
00:46:27,640 --> 00:46:31,080
Speaker 3: Absolutely yeah, changes in pressure, changes in temperature, and possibly

814
00:46:31,239 --> 00:46:34,520
Speaker 3: damage caused just by whatever device you're using to remove

815
00:46:34,560 --> 00:46:46,840
Speaker 3: it from its habitat and drag it up right.

816
00:46:47,640 --> 00:46:50,400
Speaker 1: So we're at an interesting point here with this one,

817
00:46:50,440 --> 00:46:55,400
Speaker 1: because on one hand, the paranormal the UFO explanation for

818
00:46:55,440 --> 00:46:58,719
Speaker 1: this is weird and strange and tantalizing. But then the

819
00:46:58,800 --> 00:47:05,319
Speaker 1: natural world explanation is equally, if not more, amazing and

820
00:47:05,440 --> 00:47:09,600
Speaker 1: strange and tantalizing. But of course you have to certainly,

821
00:47:09,880 --> 00:47:12,759
Speaker 1: in decades past you had to have specialized information or

822
00:47:12,800 --> 00:47:17,879
Speaker 1: access to scientific data to be able to really get

823
00:47:17,880 --> 00:47:23,120
Speaker 1: in an understanding of the natural world explanation for this object,

824
00:47:23,600 --> 00:47:27,640
Speaker 1: and perhaps in some circles the paranormal explanation is going

825
00:47:27,680 --> 00:47:29,239
Speaker 1: to be a little easier to get your hands on.

826
00:47:29,680 --> 00:47:33,680
Speaker 3: I think that's right, And it's also important to emphasize

827
00:47:34,040 --> 00:47:36,560
Speaker 3: how easy it is to look at some things in

828
00:47:36,680 --> 00:47:39,359
Speaker 3: nature and just say, well, that looks really weird. I've

829
00:47:39,400 --> 00:47:42,600
Speaker 3: never seen anything like that in nature, so it must

830
00:47:42,680 --> 00:47:45,839
Speaker 3: not be natural. And so I think it is time

831
00:47:45,880 --> 00:47:48,920
Speaker 3: to take a short diversion just to talk about sponges

832
00:47:49,040 --> 00:47:52,040
Speaker 3: and sponges that look like machines, or sponges that look

833
00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:56,880
Speaker 3: like aliens. Yeah, so again, the identification of the Eltannan

834
00:47:56,960 --> 00:48:02,600
Speaker 3: object as a specimen of Chondrocladia crescens or concretions seems

835
00:48:03,400 --> 00:48:06,360
Speaker 3: pretty much rock solid to me, Like that, that's almost

836
00:48:06,400 --> 00:48:08,560
Speaker 3: got to be what it was. But I thought it

837
00:48:08,600 --> 00:48:11,120
Speaker 3: would be worth it to look at some other sponges

838
00:48:11,160 --> 00:48:15,080
Speaker 3: as well, especially carnivorous sponges, of which this species is

839
00:48:15,120 --> 00:48:18,959
Speaker 3: an example concrescens as a carnivorous sponge. So rob, let's

840
00:48:18,960 --> 00:48:21,880
Speaker 3: look at a photo of a different but closely related

841
00:48:21,960 --> 00:48:25,120
Speaker 3: species of sponge. I've got one for you to look at.

842
00:48:25,120 --> 00:48:25,319
Speaker 1: Here.

843
00:48:25,400 --> 00:48:28,160
Speaker 3: For you people at home, I will describe it. So

844
00:48:28,280 --> 00:48:31,680
Speaker 3: this is a species from the same genus, both from Chondrocladia.

845
00:48:32,120 --> 00:48:36,440
Speaker 3: This one is Chondrocladia lira, or the liar sponge, or

846
00:48:36,480 --> 00:48:40,120
Speaker 3: more commonly, I think the harp sponge. Now I dare

847
00:48:40,200 --> 00:48:44,920
Speaker 3: say that in some photos this animal looks even more

848
00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:49,359
Speaker 3: like technology than its cousin, looks even more like technology

849
00:48:49,400 --> 00:48:50,360
Speaker 3: than concrescens.

850
00:48:50,640 --> 00:48:54,280
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this one is a really weird looking organism.

851
00:48:54,760 --> 00:49:00,279
Speaker 1: Like I instantly think about the various illustrations of an

852
00:49:00,280 --> 00:49:03,400
Speaker 1: alien life in one season the art of Wayne Barlow,

853
00:49:03,680 --> 00:49:07,640
Speaker 1: You know that, And then fantastic illustrator of monsters and aliens,

854
00:49:07,640 --> 00:49:11,400
Speaker 1: but also paleontology as well. He also did some wonderful

855
00:49:11,400 --> 00:49:14,880
Speaker 1: dinosaur illustrations. But some of his stuff looks this wild

856
00:49:15,080 --> 00:49:19,240
Speaker 1: and believable but not, you know, not something of this world.

857
00:49:20,160 --> 00:49:23,280
Speaker 3: Can you imagine the hype you could churn up around

858
00:49:23,280 --> 00:49:27,600
Speaker 3: a good, grainy or blurry, low resolution photo of this

859
00:49:27,680 --> 00:49:30,840
Speaker 3: creature if it had not yet been identified. It looks

860
00:49:30,920 --> 00:49:34,120
Speaker 3: like a device that one of James Bond's enemies would

861
00:49:34,200 --> 00:49:36,800
Speaker 3: use to generate a deadly field of rays.

862
00:49:37,600 --> 00:49:39,600
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, so.

863
00:49:39,600 --> 00:49:41,520
Speaker 3: I'll try to if you're not able to look it

864
00:49:41,600 --> 00:49:44,479
Speaker 3: up again. It's called the harp sponge or Chondrocladia lira,

865
00:49:45,200 --> 00:49:47,439
Speaker 3: but I'll try to describe it as plainly as I can.

866
00:49:47,480 --> 00:49:51,320
Speaker 3: So it is a creature made up of multiple intersecting

867
00:49:51,560 --> 00:49:56,440
Speaker 3: horizontal veins that run parallel to the seafloor. So imagine

868
00:49:56,440 --> 00:50:00,359
Speaker 3: a pattern of intersecting sort of bars or branch that

869
00:50:00,440 --> 00:50:03,319
Speaker 3: run along the bottom of the ocean. You can think

870
00:50:03,360 --> 00:50:07,000
Speaker 3: of these as kind of base bars, and they could

871
00:50:07,080 --> 00:50:10,160
Speaker 3: just be a couple of veins running basically in a

872
00:50:10,160 --> 00:50:12,959
Speaker 3: line symmetrically at the base, or there might be many

873
00:50:13,040 --> 00:50:16,080
Speaker 3: of these veins intersecting. In the photo we're looking at,

874
00:50:16,400 --> 00:50:20,000
Speaker 3: there are five intersecting veins arranged in a star pattern.

875
00:50:20,520 --> 00:50:23,279
Speaker 3: This base structure is anchored to the sediment at the

876
00:50:23,280 --> 00:50:26,960
Speaker 3: bottom with a root like structure called a rhizoid, and

877
00:50:27,040 --> 00:50:31,120
Speaker 3: then jutting straight up at ninety degree angles from the

878
00:50:31,160 --> 00:50:35,160
Speaker 3: base veins are the branches, and these are arranged like

879
00:50:35,239 --> 00:50:38,160
Speaker 3: the bars of a wrought iron fence. It looks like

880
00:50:38,200 --> 00:50:43,040
Speaker 3: a metal fence standing straight up, evenly spaced and parallel

881
00:50:43,080 --> 00:50:45,800
Speaker 3: to each other, so they look like a fence, or

882
00:50:45,840 --> 00:50:49,600
Speaker 3: an array of antenna parts or some other electronic device.

883
00:50:50,080 --> 00:50:54,400
Speaker 3: And on some of these animals, the branches gradually increase

884
00:50:54,560 --> 00:50:56,960
Speaker 3: in height as they get closer to the middle of

885
00:50:57,000 --> 00:50:58,960
Speaker 3: the star, so out at the end of the veins

886
00:50:59,000 --> 00:51:02,200
Speaker 3: the branches are very short, and then they slope gently

887
00:51:02,360 --> 00:51:06,279
Speaker 3: up in smooth slope toward the middle, so that the

888
00:51:06,280 --> 00:51:10,800
Speaker 3: fence posts or the antenna bars form a pyramid shape

889
00:51:11,120 --> 00:51:14,280
Speaker 3: with these these smooth sloping edges going up to the middle.

890
00:51:14,600 --> 00:51:17,440
Speaker 3: What on earth would you make of a blurry photograph

891
00:51:17,560 --> 00:51:18,239
Speaker 3: of this thing?

892
00:51:19,120 --> 00:51:21,319
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, I would see it would clearly feel like

893
00:51:21,400 --> 00:51:25,080
Speaker 1: nothing of this earth, some sort of a strange radar

894
00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:27,360
Speaker 1: ra or something or some an rray placed on the

895
00:51:27,400 --> 00:51:30,200
Speaker 1: bottom of the ocean by who knows what. Oh.

896
00:51:30,200 --> 00:51:33,680
Speaker 3: And then also they're on the top of these little posts.

897
00:51:33,760 --> 00:51:38,360
Speaker 3: They're bulbs. Apparently those are sperm sacks. But the species

898
00:51:38,600 --> 00:51:41,920
Speaker 3: was first described in the literature in a paper from

899
00:51:41,960 --> 00:51:46,440
Speaker 3: twenty twelve published in the Journal Invertebrate Biology. So twenty twelve,

900
00:51:46,760 --> 00:51:48,640
Speaker 3: there have been a photo of this thing, grainy photo

901
00:51:48,680 --> 00:51:51,840
Speaker 3: from decades ago. You wouldn't even have any knowledge to

902
00:51:51,960 --> 00:51:55,000
Speaker 3: compare it to. So to cite the paper, it was

903
00:51:55,080 --> 00:51:59,480
Speaker 3: by Welton L. Lee, Henry M. Riiswig, William C. Austin,

904
00:51:59,560 --> 00:52:02,920
Speaker 3: and Lanna lund Steen. It was called an extraordinary new

905
00:52:03,000 --> 00:52:09,640
Speaker 3: carnivorous sponge Chondrocladia lira in the new subgenus Symmetrocladia from

906
00:52:09,680 --> 00:52:12,840
Speaker 3: off of northern California, USA. A few notes from the

907
00:52:12,880 --> 00:52:15,960
Speaker 3: paper here they say it was observed quote from Northeast

908
00:52:16,000 --> 00:52:20,800
Speaker 3: Pacific sites at the Escanaba Ridge and Monterey canyonate depths

909
00:52:20,840 --> 00:52:24,680
Speaker 3: of three three one six to three three nine nine meters,

910
00:52:25,120 --> 00:52:27,719
Speaker 3: And the scientists describe the structure like this, They say,

911
00:52:27,800 --> 00:52:31,719
Speaker 3: quote the basic structure termed a vein, is harp or

912
00:52:31,800 --> 00:52:35,960
Speaker 3: lyre shaped from one to six veins extend by radial

913
00:52:36,040 --> 00:52:39,560
Speaker 3: growth from the organism's center. The orientation among the veins

914
00:52:39,600 --> 00:52:44,480
Speaker 3: is approximately equiangular, such that together they display pina, radiate,

915
00:52:44,840 --> 00:52:49,600
Speaker 3: tetra radiate, tri radiate, or biradiate symmetries. Each vein is

916
00:52:49,640 --> 00:52:53,560
Speaker 3: formed by a horizontal stolon supporting a series of upright

917
00:52:53,680 --> 00:52:57,600
Speaker 3: equidistantly spaced branches, each of which terminates at its apex

918
00:52:57,880 --> 00:53:01,919
Speaker 3: in a swollen ball in all observed specimens except the paratype,

919
00:53:02,280 --> 00:53:05,560
Speaker 3: so the veins. They can be oriented as a sort

920
00:53:05,560 --> 00:53:08,520
Speaker 3: of two sided comb, or with three arms or four

921
00:53:08,640 --> 00:53:12,880
Speaker 3: or five, always roughly radially symmetrical. Now, the big question

922
00:53:13,239 --> 00:53:16,360
Speaker 3: I think worth asking is why would it be shaped

923
00:53:16,440 --> 00:53:18,640
Speaker 3: like this? Like, why does it look that way? Why

924
00:53:18,719 --> 00:53:21,840
Speaker 3: would evolution make a weird looking animal that could be

925
00:53:21,880 --> 00:53:25,480
Speaker 3: a sort of technomorph structure. Well, a passage from this

926
00:53:25,600 --> 00:53:29,200
Speaker 3: paper illuminates that. It says, quote, a linear row of

927
00:53:29,239 --> 00:53:33,120
Speaker 3: filaments project from the sides, front and back of each branch,

928
00:53:33,239 --> 00:53:38,120
Speaker 3: and also from the tops of each stolon. Enclosed crustacean

929
00:53:38,280 --> 00:53:43,000
Speaker 3: prey on branches and stolons provide direct evidence of carnivory.

930
00:53:43,680 --> 00:53:47,200
Speaker 3: The structure of the veins maximize the surface area for

931
00:53:47,360 --> 00:53:52,400
Speaker 3: passive suspension feeding. So this sponge is a predator. It

932
00:53:52,480 --> 00:53:57,840
Speaker 3: is a carnivore feeding by catching small animal prey in

933
00:53:57,920 --> 00:54:01,759
Speaker 3: the filaments that extend between ween these branches, between the

934
00:54:01,800 --> 00:54:05,120
Speaker 3: posts of the wrought iron fence, the little catch hooks

935
00:54:05,120 --> 00:54:07,959
Speaker 3: that spread out between the bars, And if you zoom

936
00:54:08,000 --> 00:54:10,399
Speaker 3: in close enough on any of the pictures, you can

937
00:54:10,480 --> 00:54:13,759
Speaker 3: see the little filaments, these little hair like hooks. And

938
00:54:13,800 --> 00:54:17,360
Speaker 3: of course the scientists say that they found tiny half

939
00:54:17,480 --> 00:54:22,680
Speaker 3: digested remnants of crustaceans, of animals caught in those branches.

940
00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:28,359
Speaker 3: I was reading a press release about this research from

941
00:54:28,440 --> 00:54:31,600
Speaker 3: the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, which was involved in

942
00:54:31,640 --> 00:54:35,640
Speaker 3: the discovery, and the release was written by Dana Lecano,

943
00:54:35,920 --> 00:54:39,560
Speaker 3: and they write, quote clinging with root like rhizoids to

944
00:54:39,600 --> 00:54:43,080
Speaker 3: the soft, muddy sediment, the harp sponge captures tiny animals

945
00:54:43,080 --> 00:54:46,800
Speaker 3: that are swept into its branches by deep sea currents. Typically,

946
00:54:47,120 --> 00:54:51,080
Speaker 3: sponges feed by straining bacteria and bits of organic material

947
00:54:51,440 --> 00:54:56,080
Speaker 3: from the seawater they filter through their bodies. However, carnivorous

948
00:54:56,080 --> 00:55:00,960
Speaker 3: harp sponges snare their prey, tiny crustaceans with barbed hooks

949
00:55:01,000 --> 00:55:04,480
Speaker 3: that cover the sponges branching limbs. Once the harp sponge

950
00:55:04,600 --> 00:55:07,720
Speaker 3: has the prey in its clutches, it envelops the animal

951
00:55:07,840 --> 00:55:11,279
Speaker 3: in a thin membrane then slowly begins to digest it.

952
00:55:11,760 --> 00:55:13,880
Speaker 3: So when you look at it with this in mind,

953
00:55:14,200 --> 00:55:16,799
Speaker 3: the design makes perfect sense. It looks like some kind

954
00:55:16,800 --> 00:55:20,240
Speaker 3: of antenna array or a fence or something else because

955
00:55:20,280 --> 00:55:24,600
Speaker 3: it's trying to maximize surface area for catching things swimming

956
00:55:24,680 --> 00:55:27,760
Speaker 3: or flowing through the water. It wants to spread out

957
00:55:28,160 --> 00:55:31,200
Speaker 3: sort of a net across the sea currents and to

958
00:55:31,320 --> 00:55:34,920
Speaker 3: catch prey. But also the authors say the animal surface

959
00:55:34,960 --> 00:55:38,160
Speaker 3: area is sort of spread out maximized like that for

960
00:55:38,239 --> 00:55:43,680
Speaker 3: spermatophor capture, so it helps the sponge reproduce. And then

961
00:55:43,719 --> 00:55:45,799
Speaker 3: I was reading, so what are the branches on the

962
00:55:45,840 --> 00:55:49,960
Speaker 3: original Eltannen organism for? You know, the branches coming off

963
00:55:49,960 --> 00:55:54,800
Speaker 3: of the so called antenna that is identified as Chondrocladia concrescens.

964
00:55:55,080 --> 00:55:58,719
Speaker 3: Those are also forefeeding. They also have filaments coming off

965
00:55:58,719 --> 00:56:01,600
Speaker 3: of them that catch prey and help cover it in

966
00:56:01,600 --> 00:56:03,120
Speaker 3: the membrane and digest it.

967
00:56:03,800 --> 00:56:06,560
Speaker 1: So really, in a way you could compare them to

968
00:56:06,640 --> 00:56:10,040
Speaker 1: an antenna because they are they're spread out to collect,

969
00:56:10,760 --> 00:56:15,839
Speaker 1: but instead of collecting waves or transmissions or information, they're

970
00:56:15,840 --> 00:56:18,680
Speaker 1: collecting prey. They're collecting these tiny crustaceans.

971
00:56:19,200 --> 00:56:21,120
Speaker 3: Oh, I guess in a weird way, they also could

972
00:56:21,160 --> 00:56:25,400
Speaker 3: be like a transmitting antenna because they are releasing sperm

973
00:56:26,080 --> 00:56:28,719
Speaker 3: from the sperm sacks at the top and then collecting

974
00:56:28,800 --> 00:56:31,600
Speaker 3: it along the for reproduction purposes.

975
00:56:31,680 --> 00:56:33,640
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, I did want to mention just a couple

976
00:56:33,680 --> 00:56:35,920
Speaker 1: of other sponges to sort of drive home the weirdness

977
00:56:35,920 --> 00:56:39,319
Speaker 1: of all of this. Another sponge worth mentioning here is

978
00:56:40,320 --> 00:56:46,560
Speaker 1: Advena Magnifica. That's Latin apparently for magnificent alien, named in

979
00:56:46,680 --> 00:56:51,279
Speaker 1: twenty twenty after explorations in the Pacific by the NAA

980
00:56:51,480 --> 00:56:56,400
Speaker 1: ship Okinos Explorer. This is a quote from an NAA

981
00:56:56,480 --> 00:57:00,200
Speaker 1: article about this quote. Among the different sponges within this

982
00:57:00,280 --> 00:57:03,600
Speaker 1: alien like community was one that could not be missed.

983
00:57:04,000 --> 00:57:07,000
Speaker 1: Rising high on a stalk. This sponge had a body

984
00:57:07,040 --> 00:57:10,240
Speaker 1: with two large holes, oddly reminiscent of the large eyes

985
00:57:10,280 --> 00:57:14,080
Speaker 1: of the alien from the beloved movie E T. The Extraterrestrial.

986
00:57:14,960 --> 00:57:17,680
Speaker 1: I included comparison images here for you, Joe, in case

987
00:57:17,680 --> 00:57:19,680
Speaker 1: you don't remember what ET looks like, and you want

988
00:57:19,680 --> 00:57:21,160
Speaker 1: to know what the et sponge looks like.

989
00:57:21,240 --> 00:57:24,880
Speaker 3: Here, it's uncanny. I mean, I think it's they're copying

990
00:57:24,920 --> 00:57:25,800
Speaker 3: Steven Spielberg.

991
00:57:25,920 --> 00:57:31,400
Speaker 1: This is just it is ET's head. It's maybe less,

992
00:57:31,640 --> 00:57:33,720
Speaker 1: it's not one to one, but you can see it. Yeah,

993
00:57:33,760 --> 00:57:35,720
Speaker 1: I mean, to be clear, this one doesn't look like

994
00:57:35,720 --> 00:57:37,960
Speaker 1: a machine. This one doesn't look like an antenna, and

995
00:57:38,000 --> 00:57:40,800
Speaker 1: it only I guess a little bit looks like ET's head.

996
00:57:40,880 --> 00:57:43,800
Speaker 1: But still, you know, we're dealing with organisms that, by

997
00:57:43,840 --> 00:57:46,720
Speaker 1: their very nature feel entirely alien to us, and in

998
00:57:46,760 --> 00:57:48,560
Speaker 1: this case, they just went ahead and named it after

999
00:57:48,600 --> 00:57:51,600
Speaker 1: an alien. Now, I also suppose I need to mention

1000
00:57:52,040 --> 00:57:56,520
Speaker 1: SpongeBob SquarePants and all of those. The cartoon character is,

1001
00:57:56,560 --> 00:58:00,080
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with him, a sentient talking sponge,

1002
00:58:00,160 --> 00:58:03,000
Speaker 1: and his shape and coloration are clearly based on the

1003
00:58:03,040 --> 00:58:07,560
Speaker 1: common artificial bright yellow cleaning sponge, so not you know,

1004
00:58:08,480 --> 00:58:12,480
Speaker 1: upper depth depth sponges that are harvested and used for sponges,

1005
00:58:12,520 --> 00:58:15,560
Speaker 1: but of course the artificial kind that are manufactured to

1006
00:58:16,120 --> 00:58:18,600
Speaker 1: you know, to help us clean our dishes and so forth.

1007
00:58:19,240 --> 00:58:20,960
Speaker 1: And that's always been kind of the clear joke here

1008
00:58:21,000 --> 00:58:25,880
Speaker 1: with SpongeBob square pants. But interestingly enough, in twenty twenty one,

1009
00:58:26,080 --> 00:58:30,080
Speaker 1: you know AA's North Atlantic Stepping Stones expedition happened to

1010
00:58:30,160 --> 00:58:33,080
Speaker 1: snap a high quality photograph a mile beneath the waves

1011
00:58:33,680 --> 00:58:38,280
Speaker 1: of a not a perfect square, but a very square

1012
00:58:38,640 --> 00:58:43,200
Speaker 1: like bright yellow sponge, and beside it there's a c

1013
00:58:43,400 --> 00:58:47,040
Speaker 1: star that it doesn't look exactly like SpongeBob SquarePants his

1014
00:58:47,040 --> 00:58:50,240
Speaker 1: friend Patrick, but enough like Patrick to where people were like,

1015
00:58:50,320 --> 00:58:51,960
Speaker 1: behold we have found him.

1016
00:58:52,480 --> 00:58:53,360
Speaker 3: What are the odds?

1017
00:58:53,960 --> 00:58:58,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, it also should be pointed out that it doesn't

1018
00:58:58,360 --> 00:59:01,320
Speaker 1: have pants on, but it is square. The color seems right,

1019
00:59:01,360 --> 00:59:05,400
Speaker 1: it's pretty eye catching. It is a yellow glass sponge

1020
00:59:05,440 --> 00:59:08,440
Speaker 1: of the genus Hertwigia. I'm going to read. This is

1021
00:59:08,520 --> 00:59:11,360
Speaker 1: from a National Museum of Natural History article from twenty

1022
00:59:11,400 --> 00:59:15,640
Speaker 1: twenty one by Chris ma Quote. The yellow Herdwigia sponge

1023
00:59:15,720 --> 00:59:19,320
Speaker 1: is what's known as a hexent tittlid or glass sponge

1024
00:59:19,520 --> 00:59:23,640
Speaker 1: that is composed of biologically secreted silica or glass. Its

1025
00:59:23,680 --> 00:59:26,840
Speaker 1: bright yellow color is unusual for deep sea animals, which

1026
00:59:26,880 --> 00:59:31,040
Speaker 1: are often white or orange. Many sponges have strong chemical defenses,

1027
00:59:31,360 --> 00:59:35,280
Speaker 1: which have made them very intriguing to pharmaceutical and other

1028
00:59:35,400 --> 00:59:39,439
Speaker 1: biochemical industries. Also of note from this article is that

1029
00:59:40,400 --> 00:59:44,160
Speaker 1: the c star here that is sometimes referred to as

1030
00:59:44,200 --> 00:59:49,520
Speaker 1: Patrick this is a possibly new species of Cron's raster,

1031
00:59:49,960 --> 00:59:54,000
Speaker 1: and it is likely about to attempt to eat the sponge.

1032
00:59:53,280 --> 00:59:56,919
Speaker 1: So if this is SpongeBob SquarePants, yeah, Patrick is about

1033
00:59:56,960 --> 00:59:57,880
Speaker 1: to eat SpongeBob.

1034
00:59:58,640 --> 01:00:01,480
Speaker 3: That would be a good plot twist. Yes, I don't

1035
01:00:01,520 --> 01:00:04,160
Speaker 3: know how horrifying that is. I'm not a SpongeBob watcher.

1036
01:00:04,560 --> 01:00:06,480
Speaker 1: I don't know. SpongeBob is pretty weird, so I don't

1037
01:00:06,520 --> 01:00:09,520
Speaker 1: think it's necessarily out of character. There may be an

1038
01:00:09,520 --> 01:00:12,240
Speaker 1: episode where Patrick tries to eat SpongeBob. I mean, this

1039
01:00:12,320 --> 01:00:14,520
Speaker 1: is the show that gave us stuff like a handsome

1040
01:00:14,560 --> 01:00:15,720
Speaker 1: squid word and so forth.

1041
01:00:16,120 --> 01:00:19,560
Speaker 3: Okay, so sponges are very weird and can look very

1042
01:00:19,560 --> 01:00:22,880
Speaker 3: weird in multiple ways. They can look like known cartoon characters,

1043
01:00:22,920 --> 01:00:25,760
Speaker 3: they can look like known alien characters. They can look

1044
01:00:25,880 --> 01:00:30,560
Speaker 3: like weird suggestive unknown technology. They're all over the map.

1045
01:00:30,880 --> 01:00:33,400
Speaker 3: But I want to add another fact onto this, which is,

1046
01:00:33,560 --> 01:00:36,160
Speaker 3: anytime you see an object in the ocean and you're

1047
01:00:36,280 --> 01:00:39,960
Speaker 3: tempted to say, this looks weird, and it doesn't look

1048
01:00:40,080 --> 01:00:44,560
Speaker 3: like any known organism, so it can't be biological. Keep

1049
01:00:44,600 --> 01:00:47,960
Speaker 3: in mind another fact, there are organisms in the ocean

1050
01:00:48,040 --> 01:00:52,600
Speaker 3: that have never been photographed, never been described, documented, or classified.

1051
01:00:53,120 --> 01:00:55,600
Speaker 3: There are lots of creatures we don't know about yet,

1052
01:00:56,440 --> 01:00:59,040
Speaker 3: and you might think, yeah, well, but I mean we've

1053
01:00:59,080 --> 01:01:01,680
Speaker 3: probably found most of them, right, I mean, how many

1054
01:01:01,760 --> 01:01:05,000
Speaker 3: could there be out there that nobody's ever seen before? Well?

1055
01:01:05,160 --> 01:01:07,800
Speaker 3: I dug up a paper from twenty eleven that was

1056
01:01:07,880 --> 01:01:10,880
Speaker 3: just trying to estimate and it wasn't commenting on aliens

1057
01:01:10,960 --> 01:01:13,480
Speaker 3: or anything. It was just trying to answer a basic question,

1058
01:01:13,920 --> 01:01:18,720
Speaker 3: which was how many yet unidentified species are there out

1059
01:01:19,120 --> 01:01:22,080
Speaker 3: there in the world that we have not documented yet.

1060
01:01:23,040 --> 01:01:25,760
Speaker 3: So the paper was called how Many Species are There

1061
01:01:25,760 --> 01:01:29,280
Speaker 3: on Earth and in the Ocean? In plus Biology in

1062
01:01:29,320 --> 01:01:34,000
Speaker 3: twenty eleven by Camillo Mora at All and from the

1063
01:01:34,040 --> 01:01:37,080
Speaker 3: author's summary they say, quote here we document that the

1064
01:01:37,120 --> 01:01:42,400
Speaker 3: taxonomic classification of subspecies into higher taxonomic groups from genera

1065
01:01:42,440 --> 01:01:46,680
Speaker 3: to phyla follows a consistent pattern from which the total

1066
01:01:46,760 --> 01:01:51,120
Speaker 3: number of species in any taxonomic group can be predicted.

1067
01:01:51,520 --> 01:01:53,800
Speaker 3: So does that make sense? They're like, we don't have

1068
01:01:53,840 --> 01:01:57,160
Speaker 3: a way to count the species that haven't been found yet,

1069
01:01:57,280 --> 01:01:59,160
Speaker 3: but you can come up with a pretty good estimate

1070
01:01:59,200 --> 01:02:01,600
Speaker 3: of how many you are out there there, Because we

1071
01:02:01,640 --> 01:02:03,680
Speaker 3: know from like the tree of the sort of the

1072
01:02:03,720 --> 01:02:06,960
Speaker 3: bush of life in a way how phyla breakdown, you

1073
01:02:07,000 --> 01:02:10,400
Speaker 3: can form reasonable estimates of how many organisms are in

1074
01:02:10,480 --> 01:02:12,600
Speaker 3: each group, and so just what we know about the

1075
01:02:12,720 --> 01:02:16,080
Speaker 3: higher parts of the branches, you can guess how many

1076
01:02:16,120 --> 01:02:19,880
Speaker 3: are out there that haven't been documented yet, and their

1077
01:02:20,040 --> 01:02:23,160
Speaker 3: estimate is quote. Assessment of this pattern for all kingdoms

1078
01:02:23,160 --> 01:02:26,600
Speaker 3: of life on Earth predicts about eight point seven million

1079
01:02:26,680 --> 01:02:30,000
Speaker 3: plus or minus an error of one point three million

1080
01:02:30,400 --> 01:02:34,000
Speaker 3: species globally, of which about two point two million plus

1081
01:02:34,080 --> 01:02:37,360
Speaker 3: or minus an era of zero point eighteen million are marine.

1082
01:02:37,920 --> 01:02:41,680
Speaker 3: Our results suggests that some eighty six percent of species

1083
01:02:41,720 --> 01:02:45,080
Speaker 3: on Earth and ninety one percent in the ocean still

1084
01:02:45,120 --> 01:02:46,000
Speaker 3: await description.

1085
01:02:46,960 --> 01:02:49,400
Speaker 1: Oh wow, so there is room for just about everything

1086
01:02:49,440 --> 01:02:51,080
Speaker 1: down there. We may find handsome.

1087
01:02:50,720 --> 01:02:56,160
Speaker 3: Squids maybe ninety one percent. That is still a lot

1088
01:02:56,200 --> 01:02:59,080
Speaker 3: of room to see something bizarre in the ocean that

1089
01:02:59,240 --> 01:03:02,040
Speaker 3: matches the appear rants of nothing known to marine biology,

1090
01:03:02,800 --> 01:03:04,960
Speaker 3: and then have it turned out to be another sponge

1091
01:03:05,200 --> 01:03:08,680
Speaker 3: or just turned out to be another Nigerian or another

1092
01:03:08,720 --> 01:03:14,560
Speaker 3: weird crustacean. Remember again that Chondracladia lira. The harp sponge,

1093
01:03:14,640 --> 01:03:17,240
Speaker 3: the one that looks, in our opinion, even more like

1094
01:03:17,320 --> 01:03:21,320
Speaker 3: technology than the Altanan object was first described in the

1095
01:03:21,320 --> 01:03:24,280
Speaker 3: scientific literature in the last decade or so. The first

1096
01:03:24,400 --> 01:03:26,280
Speaker 3: articles were from like twenty twelve.

1097
01:03:27,000 --> 01:03:29,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point. I also couldn't help but

1098
01:03:29,560 --> 01:03:32,080
Speaker 1: think about the giant squid and all of this, because

1099
01:03:32,600 --> 01:03:37,120
Speaker 1: giant squid, based on an expert analysis, they seem to

1100
01:03:37,120 --> 01:03:40,080
Speaker 1: be abundant enough in the sea that sperm whales eat

1101
01:03:40,120 --> 01:03:43,680
Speaker 1: them by the millions, perhaps even hundreds of millions each year,

1102
01:03:44,280 --> 01:03:47,240
Speaker 1: and yet we don't know their true numbers. We didn't

1103
01:03:47,280 --> 01:03:50,640
Speaker 1: have any footage of a living giant squid until the

1104
01:03:50,680 --> 01:03:54,160
Speaker 1: twenty first century, and mostly new of them from their

1105
01:03:54,200 --> 01:03:57,320
Speaker 1: remains or the scars on the outside or the inside

1106
01:03:57,320 --> 01:04:00,680
Speaker 1: of sperm whales. You know, it's a highly no organism.

1107
01:04:00,680 --> 01:04:03,360
Speaker 1: In this case, it's a pretty big organism, but it's

1108
01:04:03,400 --> 01:04:07,040
Speaker 1: an elusive one that lives in an extreme environment, and

1109
01:04:07,360 --> 01:04:10,160
Speaker 1: ultimately it illustrates how little we know, even if we

1110
01:04:10,200 --> 01:04:10,720
Speaker 1: think we know.

1111
01:04:11,760 --> 01:04:14,400
Speaker 3: That is a really excellent point. But so I want

1112
01:04:14,440 --> 01:04:19,680
Speaker 3: to come back to thinking about information in allegedly anomalous

1113
01:04:19,680 --> 01:04:22,080
Speaker 3: photographs or videos or other things that are used as

1114
01:04:22,120 --> 01:04:27,360
Speaker 3: evidence for alien intelligence or alien technology or other paranormal phenomena.

1115
01:04:28,240 --> 01:04:33,520
Speaker 3: It seems to me that the photograph of the Eltannan

1116
01:04:33,600 --> 01:04:38,240
Speaker 3: object could inspire the belief that it was an antenna

1117
01:04:38,880 --> 01:04:42,040
Speaker 3: or was a piece of alien technology because of certain

1118
01:04:42,160 --> 01:04:47,240
Speaker 3: low information conditions. So it's a fairly low resolution photographs,

1119
01:04:47,280 --> 01:04:50,120
Speaker 3: kind of grainy black and white photograph, or actually, in

1120
01:04:50,160 --> 01:04:52,680
Speaker 3: the ways it's reproduced, it's black and white. I don't

1121
01:04:52,720 --> 01:04:55,280
Speaker 3: know what it was in the original. I don't know

1122
01:04:55,360 --> 01:04:57,920
Speaker 3: if I've ever seen I've never seen like a color

1123
01:04:58,000 --> 01:04:58,840
Speaker 3: original of it.

1124
01:04:59,240 --> 01:05:01,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've just seen the black and white.

1125
01:05:01,520 --> 01:05:05,760
Speaker 3: But so in various ways, it's low resolution, and it

1126
01:05:05,840 --> 01:05:10,720
Speaker 3: was being shared among people who didn't have important informational context,

1127
01:05:10,840 --> 01:05:14,200
Speaker 3: like knowledge of what types of deep sea sponges there

1128
01:05:14,200 --> 01:05:17,520
Speaker 3: were and what they look like. So it's in this

1129
01:05:17,680 --> 01:05:22,240
Speaker 3: low information environment, with lack of important context and lack

1130
01:05:22,280 --> 01:05:25,560
Speaker 3: of resolution in the photo, that it seems viable this

1131
01:05:25,600 --> 01:05:27,920
Speaker 3: could be an alien antenna. But like if you had

1132
01:05:27,920 --> 01:05:31,240
Speaker 3: gotten a really sharp photograph of this original thing, even

1133
01:05:31,280 --> 01:05:33,600
Speaker 3: if you didn't have deep sea knowledge, you'd probably be

1134
01:05:33,600 --> 01:05:35,480
Speaker 3: able to look at it and say, ah, just like

1135
01:05:35,560 --> 01:05:38,880
Speaker 3: the textures on it. This does look more like something organic.

1136
01:05:38,960 --> 01:05:41,720
Speaker 3: This is some kind of organism. And likewise, if the

1137
01:05:41,720 --> 01:05:44,280
Speaker 3: people originally looking at it had had knowledge of deep

1138
01:05:44,320 --> 01:05:47,480
Speaker 3: sea sponges that already existed at the time the photo

1139
01:05:47,600 --> 01:05:50,720
Speaker 3: was taken, they would have been able to say, oh, yeah,

1140
01:05:50,760 --> 01:05:54,280
Speaker 3: this is one of those sponges. So low information or

1141
01:05:54,400 --> 01:06:00,400
Speaker 3: low resolution is really it creates a friendly environment for

1142
01:06:00,400 --> 01:06:04,840
Speaker 3: for paranormal explanations and mythologies to arise around a piece

1143
01:06:04,880 --> 01:06:07,800
Speaker 3: of media or piece of evidence, and Rob, I wonder

1144
01:06:07,840 --> 01:06:09,919
Speaker 3: what you think about this. I kind of wonder if

1145
01:06:09,920 --> 01:06:16,280
Speaker 3: this is why underwater photos in particular are so popular

1146
01:06:16,720 --> 01:06:19,400
Speaker 3: in this in this sort of media domain, in the

1147
01:06:19,600 --> 01:06:24,000
Speaker 3: you know, fringe and alternative conspiracy theory domain, there are

1148
01:06:24,080 --> 01:06:28,320
Speaker 3: so many videos that are like, you know, mysterious objects

1149
01:06:28,440 --> 01:06:32,000
Speaker 3: underwater that are based on like a sonar image or

1150
01:06:32,040 --> 01:06:35,400
Speaker 3: a kind of murky photograph taken underwater where you can't

1151
01:06:35,400 --> 01:06:37,960
Speaker 3: really tell exactly what you're looking at, but it looks

1152
01:06:38,040 --> 01:06:42,520
Speaker 3: weird and so it just like invites you to start

1153
01:06:42,560 --> 01:06:44,640
Speaker 3: applying strange stories to it.

1154
01:06:45,280 --> 01:06:47,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you have and also just trying to interpret

1155
01:06:47,720 --> 01:06:50,880
Speaker 1: what you're seeing based on things you have seen before.

1156
01:06:51,440 --> 01:06:55,000
Speaker 1: And in some cases, your mind is going to turn

1157
01:06:55,120 --> 01:06:58,920
Speaker 1: to technology or architecture, and those are going to be

1158
01:06:58,960 --> 01:07:01,040
Speaker 1: the forms that you is to try and make sense

1159
01:07:01,080 --> 01:07:04,120
Speaker 1: of this, this this new confusing information.

1160
01:07:04,680 --> 01:07:06,560
Speaker 3: The one thing I do want to call out. In fact,

1161
01:07:06,680 --> 01:07:08,600
Speaker 3: I found this to be true with the altanna and

1162
01:07:08,640 --> 01:07:11,400
Speaker 3: antenna and true with a bunch of these other underwater things.

1163
01:07:11,480 --> 01:07:14,640
Speaker 3: There will be like the original image that inspired the

1164
01:07:15,040 --> 01:07:18,320
Speaker 3: all the speculation, and then there will be modified, doctored,

1165
01:07:18,440 --> 01:07:21,840
Speaker 3: or fully faked versions of that image where people have

1166
01:07:22,400 --> 01:07:25,440
Speaker 3: added in new information to make it look more like

1167
01:07:25,480 --> 01:07:28,400
Speaker 3: whatever they're saying it is. So they're like versions of

1168
01:07:28,440 --> 01:07:31,080
Speaker 3: the altanna and antenna that are not the original image

1169
01:07:31,080 --> 01:07:33,320
Speaker 3: that somebody made to look like an antenna.

1170
01:07:33,920 --> 01:07:39,080
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they're enhancing on their own. And you see

1171
01:07:39,080 --> 01:07:42,320
Speaker 1: that with yeah, with this this photo, but also other

1172
01:07:42,360 --> 01:07:45,520
Speaker 1: photographs as well, and honestly, it can become a little

1173
01:07:45,560 --> 01:07:50,040
Speaker 1: confusing in our modern you know, Google image search world,

1174
01:07:50,440 --> 01:07:53,439
Speaker 1: because you'll look up something like this and you'll you'll

1175
01:07:53,480 --> 01:07:57,160
Speaker 1: find hopefully you'll still find those original images. Generally, the

1176
01:07:57,200 --> 01:07:59,200
Speaker 1: original image is going to be what's grounded on any

1177
01:07:59,240 --> 01:08:05,640
Speaker 1: Wikipedia r but on other wikis then it's kind of

1178
01:08:05,720 --> 01:08:08,480
Speaker 1: up in the air. You may find that original image

1179
01:08:08,560 --> 01:08:13,200
Speaker 1: right next to these enhanced images and and artist interpretations

1180
01:08:13,200 --> 01:08:15,520
Speaker 1: of what it might look like if it were an

1181
01:08:15,560 --> 01:08:19,240
Speaker 1: antenna built by aliens, if this other thing was a spaceship,

1182
01:08:19,240 --> 01:08:22,200
Speaker 1: if this other thing was the work of ancient aliens,

1183
01:08:22,600 --> 01:08:25,439
Speaker 1: And yeah, it can be kind of it can be

1184
01:08:25,520 --> 01:08:26,280
Speaker 1: kind of confusing.

1185
01:08:26,320 --> 01:08:30,000
Speaker 3: I think, you know, there are some other interesting underwater

1186
01:08:30,080 --> 01:08:36,120
Speaker 3: anomaly images that have actually pretty pretty good scientific tie

1187
01:08:36,120 --> 01:08:37,920
Speaker 3: ins that we can maybe even come back to you

1188
01:08:38,000 --> 01:08:38,960
Speaker 3: next week if you wanted.

1189
01:08:39,520 --> 01:08:41,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that could be. That could be fun.

1190
01:08:41,400 --> 01:08:44,600
Speaker 1: There's also there's there are also a couple of examples

1191
01:08:44,680 --> 01:08:51,400
Speaker 1: from ancient Egypt that are often misinterpreted that have fascinating,

1192
01:08:51,800 --> 01:08:55,680
Speaker 1: you know, actual stories without having to drag ancient technology

1193
01:08:55,680 --> 01:08:57,240
Speaker 1: and ancient aliens into the scenario.

1194
01:08:57,640 --> 01:09:01,479
Speaker 3: Perhaps we will return to this subject in the future, all.

1195
01:09:01,520 --> 01:09:03,040
Speaker 1: Right, but for now we're going to go ahead and

1196
01:09:03,040 --> 01:09:06,400
Speaker 1: close out, and we'll just remind you, Hey, if you

1197
01:09:06,400 --> 01:09:07,960
Speaker 1: want to listen to other core episodes of Stuff to

1198
01:09:07,960 --> 01:09:10,120
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind, you'll find them on Tuesdays and Thursdays

1199
01:09:10,320 --> 01:09:12,960
Speaker 1: and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. We

1200
01:09:13,000 --> 01:09:15,559
Speaker 1: have listener mail on Monday. Short form artifact or Monster

1201
01:09:15,640 --> 01:09:18,240
Speaker 1: Fact on Wednesday and on Fridays, we set aside most

1202
01:09:18,920 --> 01:09:21,040
Speaker 1: serious concerns to talk about a weird film on Weird

1203
01:09:21,080 --> 01:09:24,040
Speaker 1: House Cinema. Also a reminder, if you're listening to us

1204
01:09:24,080 --> 01:09:26,880
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1205
01:09:26,880 --> 01:09:30,519
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1206
01:09:30,640 --> 01:09:32,880
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1207
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1208
01:09:34,840 --> 01:09:38,719
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1209
01:09:38,920 --> 01:09:40,519
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1210
01:09:40,520 --> 01:09:43,200
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1211
01:09:43,200 --> 01:09:45,040
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1212
01:09:45,200 --> 01:09:47,880
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1213
01:09:47,920 --> 01:09:56,440
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1214
01:09:56,560 --> 01:09:59,479
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01:09:59,520 --> 01:10:02,360
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