Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. It's Saturday,
Speaker 1: so once more we have a VAULD episode for you.
Speaker 1: It is the L ten and Antenna from eight ten,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. That's the original publication date. This is
Speaker 1: the first of three episodes where we got into looking
Speaker 1: at the basic some of the out there ideas that
Speaker 1: emerge in response to lo fi imagery and you know,
Speaker 1: legitimate mysteries about what's going on in some of the
Speaker 1: harder to reach places in our world or even beyond
Speaker 1: our world. So without further ado, let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick. And oh boy, I'm
Speaker 3: excited because it's anomalist historical photograph Day on Stuff to
Speaker 3: Blow your Mind. Today we are going to be talking
Speaker 3: about a moderately famous underwater image that has been classified
Speaker 3: by some as an anomaly. Now, I think it's debatable
Speaker 3: whether the word anomaly could or should still be applied
Speaker 3: to it, because I guess normally anomaly is defined as
Speaker 3: something that is different from what is normal or expected
Speaker 3: or at least appears to be different from what is
Speaker 3: normal or expected. I don't know if you can still
Speaker 3: apply that to a photo that you pretty much have
Speaker 3: conclusively identified and sorted into the mundane category now but
Speaker 3: still looks weird. Maybe we can adjudicate that later in
Speaker 3: the episode. But anyway, one thing that is interesting about
Speaker 3: anomalist photographs in our culture is that the anomaly kind
Speaker 3: of has a secondary definition beyond just something that is
Speaker 3: or appears to be different from what is normal or expected,
Speaker 3: and that secondary definition is proof of aliens confirmed.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, this is a this is a topic we've
Speaker 1: we've touched on a little bit before. I mean, things
Speaker 1: have come up, like, you know, supposed ancient etchings or
Speaker 1: carvings of dinosaurs. I remember we did at least in
Speaker 1: that one episode on that in the past. And then
Speaker 1: you can also apply this to things like photographs of bigfoot,
Speaker 1: photographs of strange lights in the sky, and so forth.
Speaker 1: And granted, especially in those two categories, you often get
Speaker 1: into situations where there is often a strong case to
Speaker 1: be made for intentional fakery on top of all the
Speaker 1: other things that can be going on with a photograph,
Speaker 1: you know, actual photographic anomalies, atmospheric anomalies, and so forth.
Speaker 1: Today's episode deals with an image that is not a
Speaker 1: work of fakery. It is an actual image that was
Speaker 1: gathered through scientific exploration. But without proper expertise, you can
Speaker 1: easily see well, basically anything you want out of it.
Speaker 1: You know, the thing about an anomaly like this quote
Speaker 1: unquote is that, yeah, whatever your preconceived notions happen to be,
Speaker 1: you can easily attach them to this thing, especially if
Speaker 1: you don't have that expertise and you don't have that
Speaker 1: sort of I don't know, general open mindedness about what
Speaker 1: it might be. Right.
Speaker 3: This is one of many cases where if you don't
Speaker 3: have the requisite contextual knowledge, something that is initially just
Speaker 3: a weird looking photograph can take on all kinds of significance,
Speaker 3: and in fact that there has been a historical mythology
Speaker 3: built around this one weird photo we're going to talk
Speaker 3: about today. But I think before we get into the
Speaker 3: photo we're talking about in today's episode, since this is
Speaker 3: going to touch on the the idea of proof of
Speaker 3: aliens confirmed and UFO lore and all that, I feel
Speaker 3: like it's fair to sort of just announce where we're
Speaker 3: coming from. We've talked about this somewhat on the show before,
Speaker 3: and we've actually gotten some recent listener mail where people
Speaker 3: were asking us to address the recent news about so
Speaker 3: called UFO disclosures, So to do that at the top, Rob,
Speaker 3: I don't want to speak for you, but I think
Speaker 3: we're probably on roughly the same page here. You can
Speaker 3: correct me if I'm wrong. Despite the recent flurry of excitement,
Speaker 3: and if you haven't kept up with it, the short
Speaker 3: version is there was recently whistleblower testimony in front of
Speaker 3: a House Oversight subcommittee in the US Congress from a
Speaker 3: man who claims that people have told him that the
Speaker 3: US government knows aliens exist and we are in possession
Speaker 3: of crash spacecraft and alien bodies, etc. There is no
Speaker 3: hard evidence publicly available, he's saying people told him this.
Speaker 3: So despite the excited media coverage about this, my personal
Speaker 3: position remains basically unchanged. And I would characterize that as
Speaker 3: regarding the topic of alien contact or alien visitation of
Speaker 3: Earth with curiosity and open mindedness, but strong skepticism.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and I do want to drive home it's
Speaker 1: perfectly all right to be excited by all of this.
Speaker 1: I mean, the idea that somebody's testifying about this in
Speaker 1: front of the House Oversight Subcommittee is pretty exciting, and
Speaker 1: he's saying some pretty exciting things and you can't help
Speaker 1: but ask, well, if true, what does that mean? And
Speaker 1: raises a lot of questions. But but yeah, I think
Speaker 1: there are some legitimate questions to be raised before you
Speaker 1: really take all that to the bank. And plus, as
Speaker 1: we've talked about on the show before, the idea of
Speaker 1: alien life, it's a complex question. You know, the deeper
Speaker 1: you go, there's obviously a big difference between saying yes,
Speaker 1: I think there is something else alive in the universe
Speaker 1: and say saying yes, I think there are other life forms.
Speaker 1: They're technologically advanced, they have spaceships, and they have visited us,
Speaker 1: and oh, some of our secret at advanced technology today
Speaker 1: is based on things that we were able to pilfer
Speaker 1: from their crashes. So like, is their life? Is there
Speaker 1: intelligent life? To paraphrase Arthur C. Clark, Any answer to
Speaker 1: any such question I think is equally mind blowing.
Speaker 3: Right, that's right, And I think it's very good to
Speaker 3: disentangle those two questions. One the question of whether aliens
Speaker 3: exist at all somewhere out there on that question, I
Speaker 3: think we just don't have enough information to decide, so there,
Speaker 3: I don't even really lean one way or another on
Speaker 3: that as of today. I think it's just totally open question,
Speaker 3: not enough information to judge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there you could basically say, well, there is,
Speaker 1: there isn't. And to get more directly to the Arthur C.
Speaker 1: Clark quote about this, like either answer is just absolutely
Speaker 1: stunning to say that we are completely alone in the universe,
Speaker 1: that we are the anomaly, are planet of life or
Speaker 1: to say, oh, yeah, there is somewhere out there, there
Speaker 1: is a planet of life, and it may be just
Speaker 1: so far from us, so far from us. That also
Speaker 1: questions of when become complex to think about. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it could be out there and we will simply never
Speaker 1: know about it, and it will never know about us,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, it's all this is just mind
Speaker 1: blowing to contemplate.
Speaker 3: But while I think alien existence overall is a totally
Speaker 3: open question, visitation is a question where I guess my
Speaker 3: standards are a little bit different, and I do start
Speaker 3: to have a lean on that question. I will say
Speaker 3: I'm not one of those people who thinks it's like
Speaker 3: gross or shameful to even investigate the idea of alien
Speaker 3: contact on Earth, like I sometimes see skeptical scientists like
Speaker 3: getting angry about like Avi Lo coming out in the
Speaker 3: news and saying, Oh, I'm combing the seafloor looking for
Speaker 3: metal spheres to run tests on them, and I think
Speaker 3: maybe they're aliens. I understand their frustration with him sort
Speaker 3: of maybe jumping the gun on the conclusion and over
Speaker 3: hyping results to say I think there are aliens. But
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's fine to investigate if that
Speaker 3: interests you, as long as you are objective about what
Speaker 3: you find and you don't misrepresent or overhype in conclusive
Speaker 3: results to the media, which I think is a legitimate
Speaker 3: thing to get kind of annoyed about. And that is
Speaker 3: the main thing that I think a lot of skeptics
Speaker 3: find annoying about that sort of project.
Speaker 1: It is kind of interesting that if a scientist is
Speaker 1: talking about putting like shrimp on a treadmill or something
Speaker 1: to that effect or of that sort of nature, there's
Speaker 1: always the follow up question, Oh, have you said you
Speaker 1: have you solved the problem of cancer? Yet? Have you
Speaker 1: have you? I guess you've you've you've tackled all of
Speaker 1: these other big scientific problems. But generally I don't hear
Speaker 1: that criticism leveled at UFO scientists and so forth. They're
Speaker 1: not like, well, wait, why are you not curing can
Speaker 1: So why are you looking for UFOs? I don't know.
Speaker 1: You can interpret that how you wish.
Speaker 3: Well, that is interesting. I mean, I guess I would
Speaker 3: say scientifically, and looking for evidence of alien visitation of
Speaker 3: Earth is like a kind of a high risk, high
Speaker 3: reward strategy. It's sort of a gambit. It's like you,
Speaker 3: I mean, here, I'm speaking with you know my personal opinion,
Speaker 3: I'd say you are very very likely wasting your time,
Speaker 3: but on the off chance you're not, you will make
Speaker 3: the most important discovery in human history.
Speaker 1: True. Yeah, So it's a it's a big gamble. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's the Latto, right, you know that the
Speaker 1: odds are just astronomical, but the prize is enormous, So
Speaker 1: you go ahead and you buy your ticket and you
Speaker 1: scratch it off.
Speaker 3: But anyway, but coming back to the question of like
Speaker 3: evidence for alien visitation, I would be you know, I'm
Speaker 3: not like somebody who doesn't want to find out about this.
Speaker 3: I would be extremely interested and excited if there were
Speaker 3: any good reason to believe aliens ever came to Earth.
Speaker 3: But I have been interested in this topic and never
Speaker 3: seen evidence that was even close to convincing. And furthermore,
Speaker 3: what I have seen is like a pattern of behavior,
Speaker 3: a pattern of behavior from alien contact advocates of presenting
Speaker 3: bad evidence as good or promising that there is good
Speaker 3: evidence somewhere else, maybe being hidden from you, maybe soon
Speaker 3: to be revealed, and you'd be really convinced if you
Speaker 3: saw that, but for some reason you can't. And so
Speaker 3: that pattern of behavior, I would say, has conditioned me,
Speaker 3: like it puts my guard up about any explosive claims
Speaker 3: on this subject, even if they're being listened to by Congress.
Speaker 3: So you know, at this point, I'm I'm still I
Speaker 3: would say, I am still waiting for good evidence, and
Speaker 3: I reserve judgment until good evidence actually shows up. That
Speaker 3: you know, like that people can look at.
Speaker 1: I like how you're always up for the possibility. For me,
Speaker 1: if I'm being honest, there's some weeks where I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is not a good week, y'all. If we are
Speaker 1: going to discover that the alien visitations have been occurring
Speaker 1: and there's like definite proof that I just would prefer
Speaker 1: that it happened like maybe next month, because I've got
Speaker 1: a lot going on right now.
Speaker 3: Well, that's a good point, i'd say. Also, yeah, there
Speaker 3: are some weeks I'm more ready to meet the Grays
Speaker 3: than other ones.
Speaker 1: Now, one thing I want to stress is, you know
Speaker 1: we're talking about here is the sort of questing for
Speaker 1: objective evidence, and how often there is a lack of
Speaker 1: objective evidence here. And I do want to stress something
Speaker 1: that we've touched on before regarding subjective experiences. Subjective paranormal
Speaker 1: experiences are certainly real to those who experience them, and
Speaker 1: they can clearly be life changing in a number of ways.
Speaker 1: So you know, you or people you know may have
Speaker 1: had these experiences. You may have seen something you couldn't
Speaker 1: completely explain. And as humans, we've always had such experiences,
Speaker 1: and we can apply skepticism and scientific logic to why
Speaker 1: these experiences occurred. You know, in short, supernatural or the
Speaker 1: other worldly explanations are rarely necessary, but we so have
Speaker 1: to acknowledge the impact of the experience, right.
Speaker 3: And this is a thing that I think makes the
Speaker 3: UFO subjects kind of difficult because a lot of people
Speaker 3: who are very devoted to belief in UFOs have in
Speaker 3: some sense had like an experience of their own or
Speaker 3: they think, you know, they're like personally connected to this subject,
Speaker 3: and so it's very important to stress that, like, while
Speaker 3: you've got to keep your skeptical standards of evidence up
Speaker 3: when you're actually saying have aliens really been here? You know,
Speaker 3: you want to have a high standard of evidence, but
Speaker 3: at the same time be sensitive to people and say,
Speaker 3: like us, looking for that standard of evidence is not
Speaker 3: a personal critique of you as a person having had
Speaker 3: an experience. You know, it is very common for people
Speaker 3: to have strange experiences that they don't know how to explain.
Speaker 3: And it's even if maybe aliens are not the best
Speaker 3: actual explanation according to the evidence we have, it's not
Speaker 3: unreasonable that some people would I don't know, seek an
Speaker 3: explanation of that sort when they've had a very powerful,
Speaker 3: unexplainable experience.
Speaker 1: Right, something you can't explain happens. You look for answers.
Speaker 1: You also look for patterns in the world around you.
Speaker 1: But as you look for answers, you also encounter pre
Speaker 1: existing scripts to try and make sense of what that was.
Speaker 1: And if it's lights in the sky, well there are
Speaker 1: a few ready made scripts that are probably the easiest
Speaker 1: to absorb, that have like social support. Some of them
Speaker 1: are religious, some of them do relate to things like space, aliens,
Speaker 1: and so forth, and so it makes sense that you
Speaker 1: would latch onto those to make sense of what happened
Speaker 1: to you. And yeah, then you go out into the world,
Speaker 1: you look for patterns, you look for supporting information.
Speaker 3: Now here's where we're going to start moving back toward
Speaker 3: our anomalist photo of the day, or supposedly anomalous photo
Speaker 3: of the day. There is a counter to everything we've
Speaker 3: been saying so far, which is sometimes people will say, well, okay,
Speaker 3: maybe you're not impressed with everything you've seen so far,
Speaker 3: but what about this photo of a triangular arrangement of lights,
Speaker 3: or this video of a white object moving across the sky,
Speaker 3: or this object on the seafloor that looks like a
Speaker 3: piece of alien radar equipment, etc. There are a lot
Speaker 3: of pieces of media out there, a lot of photo
Speaker 3: and video and sometimes sound recording and stuff where people
Speaker 3: can say this looks weird or this sounds weird. I
Speaker 3: can't think of anything that I know of on Earth
Speaker 3: that would produce an image like this, so shouldn't all
Speaker 3: of that stuff count as evidence of aliens? And this
Speaker 3: brings me to a concept that I've been thinking about
Speaker 3: recently that is really just based on an offhand phrase
Speaker 3: I heard when I honestly don't remember exactly which interview
Speaker 3: this came from, but I was listening to a series
Speaker 3: of interviews with a science writer and skeptical UFO researcher
Speaker 3: named Mick West. West He's written articles for skeptical publications
Speaker 3: about all kinds of subjects, written about kim trails and
Speaker 3: things like that, but also about UFOs of late, and
Speaker 3: has done analysis of popular UFO or UAP videos to
Speaker 3: try to figure out if you can actually identify what
Speaker 3: is it we're looking at in this video, where's some
Speaker 3: kind of weird object appears to move across the sky,
Speaker 3: and in many cases he is able to identify. In
Speaker 3: some cases he's not. And so I apologize if I'm
Speaker 3: not using West's exact preferred terminology here, but this is
Speaker 3: just what I heard him say offhand in one moment,
Speaker 3: and it was the idea of something called the low
Speaker 3: information zone. I think maybe another way to think about
Speaker 3: the same idea would be to call it the zone
Speaker 3: of low resolution, with low resolution referring in the specific
Speaker 3: sense to photographs and other attempts at imaging that produce
Speaker 3: a blurry or fuzzy or indistinct product, but also to
Speaker 3: think about low resolution in a broader sense, where it
Speaker 3: would refer to records or pieces of media or accounts,
Speaker 3: any type of evidence that contain lower desirable ratios of
Speaker 3: identifying detail and are generally lacking in context and clarity.
Speaker 3: I think this concept is really useful when talking about
Speaker 3: UFOs or UAPs, where it seems to me West's sort
Speaker 3: of generalization is that all of the pieces of evidence
Speaker 3: for aliens or other non human intelligence making contact on
Speaker 3: Earth that remain somewhat interesting or still seem kind of
Speaker 3: unsolved or viable, tend to exist in this zone of
Speaker 3: low information or low resolution, where there's a lot of vagueness,
Speaker 3: lack of verifiable detail, or lack of context. Essentially, there's
Speaker 3: not enough information in them that a reasonable observer can
Speaker 3: be confident that they understand what they're looking at. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: when there is evidence in the sort of high information zone,
Speaker 3: say when there's like really good video that's in focus
Speaker 3: and has proper foreground background for scale, and has a
Speaker 3: lot of information in it. It seems like it's specifically
Speaker 3: those cases that are more likely to turn out to
Speaker 3: have provable, clear, identifiable, mundane explanations. These turn out to
Speaker 3: be plastic bags or balloons or airplanes or stars or
Speaker 3: well known digital artifacts produced by cameras and other types
Speaker 3: of sensors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is also where intentional fakery tends to come
Speaker 1: out as well.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, And I thought this was interesting because I
Speaker 3: do not at all want to represent myself as a
Speaker 3: UFO expert. I'm not in any way, but it just
Speaker 3: sort of squares with my experience as a generalist like
Speaker 3: researching extremely variegated, supposedly anomalous phenomena throughout history. We've covered
Speaker 3: a lot of subjects like this on the show at
Speaker 3: some point, especially with things that have been claimed as
Speaker 3: proof of aliens or proof of the supernatural or whatever.
Speaker 3: It seems it's very often in the cases where information
Speaker 3: quality is high that you're most likely to nail down
Speaker 3: an alternative explanation to figure out, ah, here's what's going on.
Speaker 3: It does have an explanation, the explanation is mundane or
Speaker 3: within the range of known causes and so forth, and
Speaker 3: it's in cases where the information quality is very low,
Speaker 3: where details are vague or uncheckable, where crucial context is missing,
Speaker 3: and so forth, that you end up having to shrug
Speaker 3: your shoulders and say, I don't know what we're looking at.
Speaker 3: I don't know what this is, don't know what the
Speaker 3: explanation is. And in that case, if a UFO enthusiast
Speaker 3: is so inclined, they could say, ah, you don't know
Speaker 3: what it is. Therefore proof of aliens confirmed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this reminds me too of you know, you can
Speaker 1: also look at various signals that have been it seemed
Speaker 1: to be observed, you know, coming from elsewhere in the cosmos,
Speaker 1: sounds that have been recorded coming from the deep ocean,
Speaker 1: things where you know, there's some there are some definitely
Speaker 1: some strong hypops He's regarding these various anomalies. But at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, can you one hundred percent
Speaker 1: say what it is? Well, not necessarily, and therefore the
Speaker 1: window is left cracked at least a little bit, maybe
Speaker 1: cracked a lot further open, depending on your willingness to
Speaker 1: interpret it a certain way. But it remains open somewhat
Speaker 1: to some of these more far fetched explanations and then
Speaker 1: you can go the extra mile and say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: prove to me that the bloop is not the sound
Speaker 1: of mighty Cuthule rising in the deep.
Speaker 3: Yeah, elder gods. Disprove or accept. So I guess the
Speaker 3: question from a reasoning standpoint is if you accept, and
Speaker 3: I think most people will probably recognize this at some level,
Speaker 3: you be kind of familiar with this, even beyond like
Speaker 3: UFOs and stuff. This is just kind of true in life.
Speaker 3: If you accept this pattern is generally true that evidence
Speaker 3: one could hold up as viable in terms of proving
Speaker 3: something weird. A weird explanation tends to exist in the
Speaker 3: low information zone, whereas evidence in the high information zone
Speaker 3: is very likely to end up pointing to a mundane explanation.
Speaker 3: Should this pattern itself influence how you think about evidence
Speaker 3: of alien life, I would say personally, I don't think
Speaker 3: it should bias at all your starting assumptions about whether
Speaker 3: aliens exist, because, as we said again early on, that's
Speaker 3: that's just like not really within our search space for
Speaker 3: evidence at least so far, so open question there. But
Speaker 3: I think it probably should increase your resistance to putting
Speaker 3: apparently anomalous but low information observations into the could be
Speaker 3: alien's basket because you know this pattern exists. There's lots
Speaker 3: of stuff like this. There are many analogies. But usually
Speaker 3: the higher you are able to to turn up the
Speaker 3: resolution on what you're looking at, the more information you
Speaker 3: can add, the more context you can get, the more
Speaker 3: you know, the sharper you can make the contours of
Speaker 3: the image itself, the less likely it is that aliens
Speaker 3: are going to seem like a good explanation, and the
Speaker 3: more likely you are to be like, oh, that's a
Speaker 3: plastic bag, or like oh, that's a recognizable animal. And
Speaker 3: I think maybe that'll bring us to the case today,
Speaker 3: a case of an underwater photograph that has been dubbed
Speaker 3: the el tannin antenna, or maybe if we don't think
Speaker 3: it's an antenna in the end, should we call it
Speaker 3: like the eltannan object.
Speaker 1: Ah, yeah, that's fair. I have wondered, if everyone keeps
Speaker 1: calling it the el tann and antenna, why not just
Speaker 1: call it the altena. It seems like that like the
Speaker 1: natural direction to go in. But yeah, the this is
Speaker 1: going to be a good one to discuss because it
Speaker 1: is a thing that an image that that was completely
Speaker 1: embraced by ufaist and sort of paranormal interpretations, and continues
Speaker 1: to be held up in many circles as being this
Speaker 1: kind of icon of the paranormal in proof of something,
Speaker 1: you know what that's something is depending on your exact
Speaker 1: case that you're making for like the secret nature of reality,
Speaker 1: and yet at the same time we know exactly what
Speaker 1: it is. I mean, experts who know their way around
Speaker 1: deep sea organisms and the sorts of things you'd expect
Speaker 1: to find in the deep ocean do not seem to
Speaker 1: have had any They don't seem like they've had any
Speaker 1: doubts about this for a number of decades. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's not that long after the image was taken that
Speaker 1: we have a pretty solid and convincing answer that everyone
Speaker 1: seems to be satisfied with outside of the paranormal investigation world.
Speaker 3: Yes, I would say to be as fair as possible
Speaker 3: to the people who want a paranormal or alien explanation.
Speaker 3: And you can't know for sure what it is because
Speaker 3: like you can't go back and check it, Like this
Speaker 3: was a sort of transient phenomenon somewhere in the bottom
Speaker 3: of the ocean, so we can't go back to the
Speaker 3: exact spot and say, oh, is it still there? And
Speaker 3: check it? But I'd say ninety nine point nine percent
Speaker 3: sure we know what it was. There's something else that
Speaker 3: would explain this photo and would be found naturally in
Speaker 3: the place where it was taken.
Speaker 1: All right, let's roll out the story here. And the story,
Speaker 1: I have to say, does start off with a number
Speaker 1: of elements that already sound kind of supernatural, because the
Speaker 1: story concerns the us NSL Tennant, an ice breaking cargo
Speaker 1: vessel named after a star in the Draco constellation, and
Speaker 1: I believe the name al Tanan derives from the Arabic
Speaker 1: for the great serpent. That's all just too.
Speaker 3: Good off to a good star.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, so it already leans into some supernatural ideas here, right,
Speaker 1: But basically, back in nineteen sixty four it was working
Speaker 1: as an oceanographic research vessel in the Antarctic Ocean, which
Speaker 1: it did for more than a decade. The research crew
Speaker 1: used it to gather a great deal of data, and
Speaker 1: it was used to discover the hypothetical al Tannan impact
Speaker 1: crater in nineteen eighty one via sediment cores collected earlier.
Speaker 1: That's something to keep in mind with a lot of this,
Speaker 1: like the data is gathered and then the data has
Speaker 1: to be analyzed. It's not necessarily being analyzed on the ship.
Speaker 1: It's bringing this back home and sometimes it's years later
Speaker 1: that some particular find is made. Anyway, the al Tenant
Speaker 1: impact crater, this was in the South Pacific and it
Speaker 1: would have occurred somewhere in the neighborhood of two and
Speaker 1: a half million years ago.
Speaker 3: The impact that caused it would have been two and
Speaker 3: a half million years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, not the al Tannin, which then goes back
Speaker 1: in time in a twilight zone scenario. The ship was
Speaker 1: also used in part to discover Hollister Ridge, a group
Speaker 1: of seamounts in nineteen sixty five, and the ship's work
Speaker 1: also provided plenty of evidence to support the continental drift theory.
Speaker 1: And I believe actual specimens of many marine organisms were
Speaker 1: also collected. So to be clear, this is a hard working,
Speaker 1: serious science vessel.
Speaker 3: YEP gave us a lot of useful knowledge about the
Speaker 3: seafloor and the Antarctic oceans.
Speaker 1: Yeah. On August twenty ninth, nineteen sixty four, the crew
Speaker 1: took sample cores and photographed the seabed west of Cape
Speaker 1: Horn and it took a strange photo, like it is strange.
Speaker 1: I mean, I look at it and I have to
Speaker 1: admit this is weird looking. It's a photo of something
Speaker 1: at a depth of about three nine hundred and four
Speaker 1: meters or twelve eight hundred and eight feet. This is
Speaker 1: the image of the so called El Tannan antenna. Now
Speaker 1: I'll probably throw this image up on our various accounts
Speaker 1: where listeners discuss episodes, but in general, you can look
Speaker 1: up il tan and antenna on Wikipedia and you'll see
Speaker 1: this kind of vertical image of the eltann And antenna.
Speaker 1: But there's also this is like a apparently a zoom
Speaker 1: in a crop of of a wider image, and this
Speaker 1: one is less reproduced. But for instance, I found it
Speaker 1: initially on a Twitter post by science writer Tyler Greenfield
Speaker 1: from June of twenty twenty three, so you will see
Speaker 1: it posted in various places. And this is this image
Speaker 1: in particular, I believe it's from a book that I'm
Speaker 1: going to reference here in just a bit.
Speaker 3: If you've never seen it or are not able to
Speaker 3: look it up right now, it looks like a pole
Speaker 3: jutting up from the seafloor, straight up, and then it
Speaker 3: has radial poles that extend out from the central pole
Speaker 3: at ninety degree angles. So it does look very strange
Speaker 3: for something you would see on the seafloor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it kind of like the image itself is kind
Speaker 1: of haunting because it's all, you know, black and white.
Speaker 1: It kind of looks like a reverse negative image of
Speaker 1: a popcorn ceiling, only upside down. This is the seafloor
Speaker 1: with this strange multi armed antenna like structure or perhaps
Speaker 1: weather vane like or kind of like a surrealist street
Speaker 1: sign has those big gum knobs on the end that
Speaker 1: you know, kind of reminds you of like a jacks
Speaker 1: that you know, yeah you're throwing and yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you if you want to see an antenna, you know,
Speaker 1: you might say, well, this, this looks like an antenna,
Speaker 1: not necessarily an antenna I've seen before, but I guess
Speaker 1: you could make that case because on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I don't think this really looks like human technology. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, there do appear to be right
Speaker 1: angles in the positioning of the arms relative to its
Speaker 1: trunk or its spine, and so you can see why
Speaker 1: this image might elicit mystery in many viewers.
Speaker 3: Now it's interesting that the comparison to technology goes back
Speaker 3: to the very first published article about this. This actually
Speaker 3: is so I could not find the text of the
Speaker 3: original article in full, but I found it reproduced in
Speaker 3: a very good article from the Fourteen Times by Peter
Speaker 3: Brooksmith from May two thousand and four called the Eltannan Enigma.
Speaker 3: This is a very good skeptical article that pretty much
Speaker 3: lays out the whole history of the case and tells
Speaker 3: about the various interpretations as well as gives the almost
Speaker 3: certain correct mundane explanation of what this is. But in
Speaker 3: this article Brooksmith finds and reproduces the original article from
Speaker 3: the New Zealand Herald from December nineteen sixty four called
Speaker 3: Puzzle Picture from Seabed, which was published apparently right after
Speaker 3: the Eltannan came into Auckland and was I guess processing
Speaker 3: or analyzing some of its research materials, And so it's
Speaker 3: docked here in New Zealand, and we get this New
Speaker 3: Zealand News article which says, among other things, quote the photograph,
Speaker 3: which to a layman shows something like a complex radio
Speaker 3: aerial jutting out of the mud bottom, was taken on
Speaker 3: August twenty nine by a submarine camera. The camera is
Speaker 3: housed in a cylinder pulled along by a cable from
Speaker 3: the ship. It bounces along the seabed, taking pictures at
Speaker 3: regular intervals. Doctor Thomas Hopkins, senior marine biologist on board
Speaker 3: who specializes in plankton studies, says the object could hardly
Speaker 3: be a plant. Quote at that depth there is no light,
Speaker 3: so photosynthesis could not take place and plants could not live.
Speaker 3: If it is some strange choral formation, then no one
Speaker 3: on board has ever heard about it before. Doctor Hopkins,
Speaker 3: a graduate of the University of Southern California, said the
Speaker 3: ship's photographer had been thoroughly questioned on how he had
Speaker 3: developed the photograph. However, everyone was certain the picture was
Speaker 3: not faked. I wouldn't like to say that the thing
Speaker 3: is man made, because this brings up the problem of
Speaker 3: how one would get it there, he says. But it's
Speaker 3: fairly symmetrical, and the offshoots are all ninety degrees apart.
Speaker 3: This is why it has been argued over for so long.
Speaker 3: And then the article goes on to say the object
Speaker 3: is probably about sixty centimeters high or about two feet high.
Speaker 3: The photograph is being sent for analysis to some I
Speaker 3: think some labs or the University of Southern California, and
Speaker 3: that's about the end of it. But ooh, it's funny
Speaker 3: that while nowhere in the article is it actually suggested
Speaker 3: in seriousness that this object is alien or anything like that.
Speaker 3: I think they accidentally laid the groundwork for that kind
Speaker 3: of mythology to evolve, because there is kind of offhanded
Speaker 3: suggestion of ruling out mundane explanations like couldn't be a
Speaker 3: plant because you know, no light gets down there, so
Speaker 3: that almost sounds too you know, a very a very
Speaker 3: enthusiastic pro UFO type reader saying like, oh, well, then
Speaker 3: it couldn't be organic at all. And then you say, well,
Speaker 3: it couldn't be human made because you know, how would
Speaker 3: you get it down to the bottom of the ocean.
Speaker 3: And somebody could say that that's right, couldn't be human,
Speaker 3: couldn't be couldn't be a plant, so it couldn't be organic. So,
Speaker 3: I mean, what's left.
Speaker 1: So just as the image has been taken, it's hit
Speaker 1: the mainstream presses, and yes, at this point it is
Speaker 1: picked up by the ufology and sort of fringe segment
Speaker 1: of the population, and you know, it seems I don't
Speaker 1: know if this was the case with you, Joe. It
Speaker 1: seems like there might be a lot of this sort
Speaker 1: of material, especially from like the mid to late sixties
Speaker 1: that perhaps just hasn't survived, that isn't archive, that hasn't
Speaker 1: been recorded, or it has where the information has been
Speaker 1: reprinted and reused. Maybe the attribution system involved there isn't
Speaker 1: as rigorous as you would find and like scientific reporting
Speaker 1: and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I was wondering about how many things
Speaker 3: there are like this photo that just like nobody ever
Speaker 3: noticed and attached any mythology to, you know, like they
Speaker 3: just like never became a nucleation point for lore. But
Speaker 3: there are just like a weird poo out there that
Speaker 3: was taken maybe published in a newspaper article and then
Speaker 3: forgotten like it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: So this originally was just published in a New Zealand
Speaker 3: Herald article. I don't know how many people read that,
Speaker 3: but the right people saw it and found out about it,
Speaker 3: and that led to a whole burgeoning mythology and to
Speaker 3: its inclusion and books and articles about UFOs and the
Speaker 3: paranormal and so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it seems to sort of maybe make the
Speaker 1: rounds a little bit, but it definitely gets picked up
Speaker 1: in what, at least in my research, was the earliest
Speaker 1: book reference that I could actually like pull up on
Speaker 1: my end, the earliest book reference to the Eltannan antenna.
Speaker 1: And this is this would stem from I believe nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight. The book is Harmonic thirty three by Bruce Cathy,
Speaker 1: a New Zealand airline pilot who went on to write
Speaker 1: seven books about UFOs, as well as a supposed world
Speaker 1: energy grid the powers flying saucers and permits the detonation
Speaker 1: of atomic explosions, but only at particular juncture points and
Speaker 1: at specific times.
Speaker 3: Kathy's work is explored extensively in this article in the
Speaker 3: fourteen Times from two thousand and four by brook Smith,
Speaker 3: and it is what's the right word, I guess just complex.
Speaker 3: There is a lot of maps and annotation and reading
Speaker 3: deeply into systems of geographical coordinates and making plots a
Speaker 3: sort of a pattern seeking run amock.
Speaker 1: Yeah. What I gather is that Bruce Cathy was an intelligent,
Speaker 1: determined man who, having had a paranormal encounter of his own,
Speaker 1: attempted to find some meaning and pattern in alleged sightings
Speaker 1: around the world, you know, creating maps, drawing these lines,
Speaker 1: working out different coordinates, and you know, working with descriptions
Speaker 1: of things that seem like antennae, is either antennas that
Speaker 1: are described on UFOs or in this case, an image
Speaker 1: of something that can be interpreted as an antenna. The problem,
Speaker 1: of course, is that the whole enterprise is constructed with
Speaker 1: narrow focus and a preconceived conclusion, you know, based in
Speaker 1: part in citing subjective experiences and also the sort of
Speaker 1: low res information. So anyway, the first edition of this
Speaker 1: book comes out, I believe in nineteen sixty eight, but
Speaker 1: then the nineteen seventy two or nineteen seventy three reprint
Speaker 1: of the book actually features that photograph of the altanna
Speaker 1: and antenna on the cover, you know, with some added
Speaker 1: you know, jazzy title design and like a blue tint,
Speaker 1: and it is very eye catching, and I think it's
Speaker 1: important that eye catching aspect of this cover in this illustration.
Speaker 1: I think it's important because you have to imagine that
Speaker 1: this book, you know, certainly it's going to connect with
Speaker 1: various individuals that are interested in the paranormal and UFOs
Speaker 1: and so forth, but also it's just going to be
Speaker 1: on the shelf or or you know, in the layout
Speaker 1: perhaps in a magazine with other books of this nature.
Speaker 1: And in a sense you can imagine how it becomes
Speaker 1: solidified as a symbol, you know, as one of these
Speaker 1: sort of articles of faith in the paranormal, alongside things
Speaker 1: like famous UFO sightings or illustrations, images of stone hinge
Speaker 1: and so forth.
Speaker 3: Ah, So it's not just one instrumental piece of evidence
Speaker 3: that helps prove your theory about UFOs and alien contact
Speaker 3: and everything, but it takes on a meaning. It has
Speaker 3: a kind of significance where it might emotionally feel like
Speaker 3: if this particular piece of evidence were explained as something
Speaker 3: actually mundane, it would kind of be an insult to
Speaker 3: the whole project.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but also I think, just I don't know, part
Speaker 1: of this is me going back to like being in
Speaker 1: you know, being in stores, whether like they're you know,
Speaker 1: movies or albums. You know, even if it's not an
Speaker 1: album that you've listened to or a book you've read
Speaker 1: or a movie you've seen, like that poster art being
Speaker 1: displayed among all the other that album cover being displayed
Speaker 1: among all the others, there's kind of this codifying effect
Speaker 1: I feel, Yeah, but at any rate, Yeah, it's no
Speaker 1: accident though that the altan and antenna is on the
Speaker 1: cover there, because it does seem kind of like key
Speaker 1: to his main ideas here. In particular, in the book,
Speaker 1: he describes the altan and antenna and briefly explains why
Speaker 1: he thinks humans couldn't have made it, and doesn't even
Speaker 1: mention the possibility of organic origin even to dispute it,
Speaker 1: like it doesn't even say anything like, well, some people
Speaker 1: think this might be an organism, but it's not, or
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like an organism. There's none of that.
Speaker 1: He describes it as a quote bit of iron mungery
Speaker 1: unquote that no humans could have possibly placed.
Speaker 3: Okay, so as he presents, it's just axiomatic. This is
Speaker 3: made of metal, and it's some piece of technology. And
Speaker 3: the question is could it be human or must it
Speaker 3: be other than human? And here's the argument why it
Speaker 3: could not be human?
Speaker 1: Right he In the book, he writes the following quote,
Speaker 1: it would be interesting to know what the Americans have
Speaker 1: made of that picture and whether any attempt has been
Speaker 1: made to salvage the strange object they photographed by accident
Speaker 1: in view of my earlier sighting in the Capara Harbor.
Speaker 1: I was willing to accept that the aerial had been
Speaker 1: placed there by an unidentified submarine object or USO. Can
Speaker 1: you offer a better explanation.
Speaker 3: Some of the writers who prefer an alien explanation specifically
Speaker 3: cite the claim that, well, it was too far down
Speaker 3: on the bottom of the ocean for a human made submarine,
Speaker 3: any human made submarine at that time, to have deposited it.
Speaker 3: Submarines couldn't go that deep. And I don't want to
Speaker 3: I'm not mocking here or anything, but I mean I
Speaker 3: do kind of think could you not think of another
Speaker 3: way that, like a piece of metal could made by humans,
Speaker 3: could have gotten to the bottom of the ocean other
Speaker 3: than being deposited by a deep sea submersible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like there's a rather obvious way to
Speaker 1: get something down.
Speaker 3: There, right, Otherwise you'd have to say the same thing
Speaker 3: about like metal drums and barrels and stuff that end
Speaker 3: up at the bottom of the ocean. I mean, there's gravity,
Speaker 3: things can fall to the bottom. I guess there is
Speaker 3: some reasoning militating against this that says, well, but it's
Speaker 3: standing upright though. I guess you could explain that just
Speaker 3: by like it being weighted a certain way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. For Kathy, his argument seems to be, well, okay,
Speaker 1: you could probably get some sort of submersible down there,
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't be able to do this kind of work.
Speaker 1: So still I agree. It seems like it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like that logic would necessarily rule it out. But anyway,
Speaker 1: elsewhere in the book, he frequently comes back to the
Speaker 1: alten and antenna as being part of this elaborate global
Speaker 1: energy grid, and he also connects the knobs or its
Speaker 1: apparent knobs, two objects described on the bottoms of UFOs.
Speaker 1: So if you were encountering images of this artifact, this object,
Speaker 1: or this antenna in this book, or in books inspired
Speaker 1: by it, or in the same sort of realm, could
Speaker 1: you might well think, well, this is this is truly
Speaker 1: a mystery, and we've got to go back there and
Speaker 1: find it someday, or maybe we won't find it because
Speaker 1: someone else has already come and and and harvested it,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So you can imagine how this kind of
Speaker 1: takes up and takes up this energy and becomes this again,
Speaker 1: this kind of like icon within the realm of like
Speaker 1: paranormal UFO investigation.
Speaker 3: But as we have teased now multiple times, there's really
Speaker 3: not much of a question anymore what it actually is.
Speaker 3: And this is the result of marine biologists weighing.
Speaker 1: In that's right. And that's one of the key things
Speaker 1: about this one is that if you're looking at individuals
Speaker 1: that actually have you know, the expertise regarding things that
Speaker 1: might appear on the ocean floor in this part of
Speaker 1: the world, Yeah, there seems to be no and there
Speaker 1: hasn't been any mystery for decades and decades. In particular,
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier how there's the horizontal version of the
Speaker 1: image and then there's this wider version of the image
Speaker 1: that hasn't been cropped. This appears in a nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: one book titled The Face of the Deep. This was
Speaker 1: published by Oxford University Press and was authored by Bruce C.
Speaker 1: Heasen and Charles D. Hollister. This book was not a
Speaker 1: UFOology work, but rather set out to present quote, a
Speaker 1: selection of the best photographs of the deep sea floor
Speaker 1: for you to look at and contemplate, which maybe wasn't
Speaker 1: taking it far enough because Bruce Cathy and others were
Speaker 1: certainly contemplating it, but they were going off an entirely
Speaker 1: different direction. In the book, they note that about it,
Speaker 1: one third of the photographs in the book were obtained
Speaker 1: quote over the past few years in Antarctic waters by
Speaker 1: the National Science Foundation's research ship el Tatnan.
Speaker 3: All Right, so what do they say about the photo
Speaker 3: in question?
Speaker 1: All right, Well, the caption for the photo and alone says,
Speaker 1: note antenna like sponge clataisa in the lower photograph.
Speaker 3: All right, So not only are they noting this is
Speaker 3: an animal, it is a sponge, they specify a genus name,
Speaker 3: which was at the time Clatterresa. Now, as a kind
Speaker 3: of confusing note, it seems to me that the same
Speaker 3: animal they're talking about, this type of sponge, was at
Speaker 3: the time taxonomized in the genus Clatterresa. So it was
Speaker 3: known as Clatterresa concretions. But now the same species is
Speaker 3: sorted into a different genus and it's known as Chondrocladia concretions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this sort of thing's fairly common.
Speaker 3: Yeah, things get differently taxonomized when they get further studied.
Speaker 1: Now, elsewhere in the book The Face of the Deep,
Speaker 1: the authors go into a little more detail. They're right. Quote,
Speaker 1: while the bath sponges are limited to the warmest shallow
Speaker 1: water of the continental shelf. A few of their bizarre
Speaker 1: relatives are rather commonly found in the deep sea. Clatteriza,
Speaker 1: A particularly dramatic one which sometimes resembles a space age
Speaker 1: microwave antenna, was not uncommon in the early dredge halls
Speaker 1: of Challenger and Blake. Alexander Agassi observed that quote they
Speaker 1: are sponges with a long stem ending in ramifying roots
Speaker 1: sunk deeply in the mud. The stem has nodes with
Speaker 1: four to six clublike appendages. They evidently cover like Bush's
Speaker 1: extensive tracts of the bottom. Now, a couple of notes
Speaker 1: here about what they're referring to. Alexander Agassi lived eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty five through nineteen ten, and he was a noted
Speaker 1: Swiss American scientist and inventor. He was also a rather
Speaker 1: infamous supporter of scientific racism, but his contributions in non
Speaker 1: human biology and geology of the time seem pretty sound.
Speaker 3: And the Challenger there would be referring to the Challenger expedition,
Speaker 3: which we've talked about on the show before. I think
Speaker 3: maybe we talked about it in the context of, like
Speaker 3: maybe William beebe or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so some deep sea exploration dredging up
Speaker 1: life forms and so forth from the bottom.
Speaker 3: Right, But this would have been in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 3: so like a long time ago. But they're in nineteenth
Speaker 3: century ships like running sort of devices along the seafloor
Speaker 3: to try to pull things up and see what's down there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So at this point, this particular species had been
Speaker 1: known about for decades. It was this was not like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is some unknown creature. No, they when people wh
Speaker 1: knew what they were talking about looked at it, they
Speaker 1: were able to match it up with some actual organisms
Speaker 1: in the record book.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, people who knew about deep sea sponges would
Speaker 3: know what they were looking at. But to the average person,
Speaker 3: it just looks like a really weird shape that could
Speaker 3: well be in antenna. Like you wouldn't expect any just
Speaker 3: the regular person off the street to recognize this species
Speaker 3: of sponge.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, this is special information to be it to
Speaker 1: be clear. Now, in the book, they note that the
Speaker 1: photo in question, in a zoomed in horizontal version, is
Speaker 1: of quote a bizarre antenna like abysal sponge, which quote
Speaker 1: stands erect towering over the manganese nodules in the bellings
Speaker 1: Housen basin South Pacific. There were apparently sixteen different images
Speaker 1: from this location. And again, remember we were talking about
Speaker 1: how those images were taken. They were kind of like
Speaker 1: fired off automatically by this large capsule being pulled at
Speaker 1: depth behind the ship. But of those sixteen images, only
Speaker 1: one image captured this sponge.
Speaker 3: Now it's mentioned that the sponge is often found in
Speaker 3: sort of little forests on the seafloor where there would
Speaker 3: be others of the same type surrounding it. In this case,
Speaker 3: it was standing alone, and I wonder how it would
Speaker 3: have been received differently if there were other similarly shaped
Speaker 3: objects all around it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an interesting question because on one hand, you
Speaker 1: can imagine exactly the same thing occurring. But you could
Speaker 1: also make it argument that yes, by standing alone and
Speaker 1: you know, standing out on the seafloor scape around it
Speaker 1: made it more iconic, made it more mysterious seeming. But
Speaker 1: the authors here note that while the Challenger and Blake
Speaker 1: expeditions dredged in an area with considerably more of these, yeah,
Speaker 1: this one does seem to have stood alone. Agacy drew
Speaker 1: the sponge in illustrations with drooping or arching limbs curved
Speaker 1: in either case, while this image shows the organism erect
Speaker 1: with horizontally positioned appendages. They also note that quote the
Speaker 1: tops of the appendages show up so brightly in the
Speaker 1: photographs to suggest they are either of an extremely light
Speaker 1: color or that they phosphores So I think that's that's
Speaker 1: a good point. We'll probably come back to that. But
Speaker 1: also this whole idea of well, Agasy drew it one
Speaker 1: way and it looks a different way. I mean that
Speaker 1: that pretty much matches up with a lot of what
Speaker 1: we've talked about regarding deep sea organisms. If you dredge
Speaker 1: them up for the deep or pull them up even
Speaker 1: in even in like a cage or something, there's a
Speaker 1: lot that can happen on its way to the surface.
Speaker 1: You're taking it out of one environment and bring it
Speaker 1: into a drastically different one. All sorts of things can
Speaker 1: occur to you, you know, decompression, explosions and so forth.
Speaker 1: So it's not that crazy to imagine that, well, it
Speaker 1: looked different once they had dredged it up from the
Speaker 1: bottom as opposed to how it is positioned in its
Speaker 1: natural habitat.
Speaker 3: Absolutely yeah, changes in pressure, changes in temperature, and possibly
Speaker 3: damage caused just by whatever device you're using to remove
Speaker 3: it from its habitat and drag it up right.
Speaker 1: So we're at an interesting point here with this one,
Speaker 1: because on one hand, the paranormal the UFO explanation for
Speaker 1: this is weird and strange and tantalizing. But then the
Speaker 1: natural world explanation is equally, if not more, amazing and
Speaker 1: strange and tantalizing. But of course you have to certainly,
Speaker 1: in decades past you had to have specialized information or
Speaker 1: access to scientific data to be able to really get
Speaker 1: in an understanding of the natural world explanation for this object,
Speaker 1: and perhaps in some circles the paranormal explanation is going
Speaker 1: to be a little easier to get your hands on.
Speaker 3: I think that's right, And it's also important to emphasize
Speaker 3: how easy it is to look at some things in
Speaker 3: nature and just say, well, that looks really weird. I've
Speaker 3: never seen anything like that in nature, so it must
Speaker 3: not be natural. And so I think it is time
Speaker 3: to take a short diversion just to talk about sponges
Speaker 3: and sponges that look like machines, or sponges that look
Speaker 3: like aliens. Yeah, so again, the identification of the Eltannan
Speaker 3: object as a specimen of Chondrocladia crescens or concretions seems
Speaker 3: pretty much rock solid to me, Like that, that's almost
Speaker 3: got to be what it was. But I thought it
Speaker 3: would be worth it to look at some other sponges
Speaker 3: as well, especially carnivorous sponges, of which this species is
Speaker 3: an example concrescens as a carnivorous sponge. So rob, let's
Speaker 3: look at a photo of a different but closely related
Speaker 3: species of sponge. I've got one for you to look at.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 3: For you people at home, I will describe it. So
Speaker 3: this is a species from the same genus, both from Chondrocladia.
Speaker 3: This one is Chondrocladia lira, or the liar sponge, or
Speaker 3: more commonly, I think the harp sponge. Now I dare
Speaker 3: say that in some photos this animal looks even more
Speaker 3: like technology than its cousin, looks even more like technology
Speaker 3: than concrescens.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this one is a really weird looking organism.
Speaker 1: Like I instantly think about the various illustrations of an
Speaker 1: alien life in one season the art of Wayne Barlow,
Speaker 1: You know that, And then fantastic illustrator of monsters and aliens,
Speaker 1: but also paleontology as well. He also did some wonderful
Speaker 1: dinosaur illustrations. But some of his stuff looks this wild
Speaker 1: and believable but not, you know, not something of this world.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine the hype you could churn up around
Speaker 3: a good, grainy or blurry, low resolution photo of this
Speaker 3: creature if it had not yet been identified. It looks
Speaker 3: like a device that one of James Bond's enemies would
Speaker 3: use to generate a deadly field of rays.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, so.
Speaker 3: I'll try to if you're not able to look it
Speaker 3: up again. It's called the harp sponge or Chondrocladia lira,
Speaker 3: but I'll try to describe it as plainly as I can.
Speaker 3: So it is a creature made up of multiple intersecting
Speaker 3: horizontal veins that run parallel to the seafloor. So imagine
Speaker 3: a pattern of intersecting sort of bars or branch that
Speaker 3: run along the bottom of the ocean. You can think
Speaker 3: of these as kind of base bars, and they could
Speaker 3: just be a couple of veins running basically in a
Speaker 3: line symmetrically at the base, or there might be many
Speaker 3: of these veins intersecting. In the photo we're looking at,
Speaker 3: there are five intersecting veins arranged in a star pattern.
Speaker 3: This base structure is anchored to the sediment at the
Speaker 3: bottom with a root like structure called a rhizoid, and
Speaker 3: then jutting straight up at ninety degree angles from the
Speaker 3: base veins are the branches, and these are arranged like
Speaker 3: the bars of a wrought iron fence. It looks like
Speaker 3: a metal fence standing straight up, evenly spaced and parallel
Speaker 3: to each other, so they look like a fence, or
Speaker 3: an array of antenna parts or some other electronic device.
Speaker 3: And on some of these animals, the branches gradually increase
Speaker 3: in height as they get closer to the middle of
Speaker 3: the star, so out at the end of the veins
Speaker 3: the branches are very short, and then they slope gently
Speaker 3: up in smooth slope toward the middle, so that the
Speaker 3: fence posts or the antenna bars form a pyramid shape
Speaker 3: with these these smooth sloping edges going up to the middle.
Speaker 3: What on earth would you make of a blurry photograph
Speaker 3: of this thing?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, I would see it would clearly feel like
Speaker 1: nothing of this earth, some sort of a strange radar
Speaker 1: ra or something or some an rray placed on the
Speaker 1: bottom of the ocean by who knows what. Oh.
Speaker 3: And then also they're on the top of these little posts.
Speaker 3: They're bulbs. Apparently those are sperm sacks. But the species
Speaker 3: was first described in the literature in a paper from
Speaker 3: twenty twelve published in the Journal Invertebrate Biology. So twenty twelve,
Speaker 3: there have been a photo of this thing, grainy photo
Speaker 3: from decades ago. You wouldn't even have any knowledge to
Speaker 3: compare it to. So to cite the paper, it was
Speaker 3: by Welton L. Lee, Henry M. Riiswig, William C. Austin,
Speaker 3: and Lanna lund Steen. It was called an extraordinary new
Speaker 3: carnivorous sponge Chondrocladia lira in the new subgenus Symmetrocladia from
Speaker 3: off of northern California, USA. A few notes from the
Speaker 3: paper here they say it was observed quote from Northeast
Speaker 3: Pacific sites at the Escanaba Ridge and Monterey canyonate depths
Speaker 3: of three three one six to three three nine nine meters,
Speaker 3: And the scientists describe the structure like this, They say,
Speaker 3: quote the basic structure termed a vein, is harp or
Speaker 3: lyre shaped from one to six veins extend by radial
Speaker 3: growth from the organism's center. The orientation among the veins
Speaker 3: is approximately equiangular, such that together they display pina, radiate,
Speaker 3: tetra radiate, tri radiate, or biradiate symmetries. Each vein is
Speaker 3: formed by a horizontal stolon supporting a series of upright
Speaker 3: equidistantly spaced branches, each of which terminates at its apex
Speaker 3: in a swollen ball in all observed specimens except the paratype,
Speaker 3: so the veins. They can be oriented as a sort
Speaker 3: of two sided comb, or with three arms or four
Speaker 3: or five, always roughly radially symmetrical. Now, the big question
Speaker 3: I think worth asking is why would it be shaped
Speaker 3: like this? Like, why does it look that way? Why
Speaker 3: would evolution make a weird looking animal that could be
Speaker 3: a sort of technomorph structure. Well, a passage from this
Speaker 3: paper illuminates that. It says, quote, a linear row of
Speaker 3: filaments project from the sides, front and back of each branch,
Speaker 3: and also from the tops of each stolon. Enclosed crustacean
Speaker 3: prey on branches and stolons provide direct evidence of carnivory.
Speaker 3: The structure of the veins maximize the surface area for
Speaker 3: passive suspension feeding. So this sponge is a predator. It
Speaker 3: is a carnivore feeding by catching small animal prey in
Speaker 3: the filaments that extend between ween these branches, between the
Speaker 3: posts of the wrought iron fence, the little catch hooks
Speaker 3: that spread out between the bars, And if you zoom
Speaker 3: in close enough on any of the pictures, you can
Speaker 3: see the little filaments, these little hair like hooks. And
Speaker 3: of course the scientists say that they found tiny half
Speaker 3: digested remnants of crustaceans, of animals caught in those branches.
Speaker 3: I was reading a press release about this research from
Speaker 3: the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, which was involved in
Speaker 3: the discovery, and the release was written by Dana Lecano,
Speaker 3: and they write, quote clinging with root like rhizoids to
Speaker 3: the soft, muddy sediment, the harp sponge captures tiny animals
Speaker 3: that are swept into its branches by deep sea currents. Typically,
Speaker 3: sponges feed by straining bacteria and bits of organic material
Speaker 3: from the seawater they filter through their bodies. However, carnivorous
Speaker 3: harp sponges snare their prey, tiny crustaceans with barbed hooks
Speaker 3: that cover the sponges branching limbs. Once the harp sponge
Speaker 3: has the prey in its clutches, it envelops the animal
Speaker 3: in a thin membrane then slowly begins to digest it.
Speaker 3: So when you look at it with this in mind,
Speaker 3: the design makes perfect sense. It looks like some kind
Speaker 3: of antenna array or a fence or something else because
Speaker 3: it's trying to maximize surface area for catching things swimming
Speaker 3: or flowing through the water. It wants to spread out
Speaker 3: sort of a net across the sea currents and to
Speaker 3: catch prey. But also the authors say the animal surface
Speaker 3: area is sort of spread out maximized like that for
Speaker 3: spermatophor capture, so it helps the sponge reproduce. And then
Speaker 3: I was reading, so what are the branches on the
Speaker 3: original Eltannen organism for? You know, the branches coming off
Speaker 3: of the so called antenna that is identified as Chondrocladia concrescens.
Speaker 3: Those are also forefeeding. They also have filaments coming off
Speaker 3: of them that catch prey and help cover it in
Speaker 3: the membrane and digest it.
Speaker 1: So really, in a way you could compare them to
Speaker 1: an antenna because they are they're spread out to collect,
Speaker 1: but instead of collecting waves or transmissions or information, they're
Speaker 1: collecting prey. They're collecting these tiny crustaceans.
Speaker 3: Oh, I guess in a weird way, they also could
Speaker 3: be like a transmitting antenna because they are releasing sperm
Speaker 3: from the sperm sacks at the top and then collecting
Speaker 3: it along the for reproduction purposes.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, I did want to mention just a couple
Speaker 1: of other sponges to sort of drive home the weirdness
Speaker 1: of all of this. Another sponge worth mentioning here is
Speaker 1: Advena Magnifica. That's Latin apparently for magnificent alien, named in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty after explorations in the Pacific by the NAA
Speaker 1: ship Okinos Explorer. This is a quote from an NAA
Speaker 1: article about this quote. Among the different sponges within this
Speaker 1: alien like community was one that could not be missed.
Speaker 1: Rising high on a stalk. This sponge had a body
Speaker 1: with two large holes, oddly reminiscent of the large eyes
Speaker 1: of the alien from the beloved movie E T. The Extraterrestrial.
Speaker 1: I included comparison images here for you, Joe, in case
Speaker 1: you don't remember what ET looks like, and you want
Speaker 1: to know what the et sponge looks like.
Speaker 3: Here, it's uncanny. I mean, I think it's they're copying
Speaker 3: Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 1: This is just it is ET's head. It's maybe less,
Speaker 1: it's not one to one, but you can see it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, to be clear, this one doesn't look like
Speaker 1: a machine. This one doesn't look like an antenna, and
Speaker 1: it only I guess a little bit looks like ET's head.
Speaker 1: But still, you know, we're dealing with organisms that, by
Speaker 1: their very nature feel entirely alien to us, and in
Speaker 1: this case, they just went ahead and named it after
Speaker 1: an alien. Now, I also suppose I need to mention
Speaker 1: SpongeBob SquarePants and all of those. The cartoon character is,
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with him, a sentient talking sponge,
Speaker 1: and his shape and coloration are clearly based on the
Speaker 1: common artificial bright yellow cleaning sponge, so not you know,
Speaker 1: upper depth depth sponges that are harvested and used for sponges,
Speaker 1: but of course the artificial kind that are manufactured to
Speaker 1: you know, to help us clean our dishes and so forth.
Speaker 1: And that's always been kind of the clear joke here
Speaker 1: with SpongeBob square pants. But interestingly enough, in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: you know AA's North Atlantic Stepping Stones expedition happened to
Speaker 1: snap a high quality photograph a mile beneath the waves
Speaker 1: of a not a perfect square, but a very square
Speaker 1: like bright yellow sponge, and beside it there's a c
Speaker 1: star that it doesn't look exactly like SpongeBob SquarePants his
Speaker 1: friend Patrick, but enough like Patrick to where people were like,
Speaker 1: behold we have found him.
Speaker 3: What are the odds?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it also should be pointed out that it doesn't
Speaker 1: have pants on, but it is square. The color seems right,
Speaker 1: it's pretty eye catching. It is a yellow glass sponge
Speaker 1: of the genus Hertwigia. I'm going to read. This is
Speaker 1: from a National Museum of Natural History article from twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one by Chris ma Quote. The yellow Herdwigia sponge
Speaker 1: is what's known as a hexent tittlid or glass sponge
Speaker 1: that is composed of biologically secreted silica or glass. Its
Speaker 1: bright yellow color is unusual for deep sea animals, which
Speaker 1: are often white or orange. Many sponges have strong chemical defenses,
Speaker 1: which have made them very intriguing to pharmaceutical and other
Speaker 1: biochemical industries. Also of note from this article is that
Speaker 1: the c star here that is sometimes referred to as
Speaker 1: Patrick this is a possibly new species of Cron's raster,
Speaker 1: and it is likely about to attempt to eat the sponge.
Speaker 1: So if this is SpongeBob SquarePants, yeah, Patrick is about
Speaker 1: to eat SpongeBob.
Speaker 3: That would be a good plot twist. Yes, I don't
Speaker 3: know how horrifying that is. I'm not a SpongeBob watcher.
Speaker 1: I don't know. SpongeBob is pretty weird, so I don't
Speaker 1: think it's necessarily out of character. There may be an
Speaker 1: episode where Patrick tries to eat SpongeBob. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is the show that gave us stuff like a handsome
Speaker 1: squid word and so forth.
Speaker 3: Okay, so sponges are very weird and can look very
Speaker 3: weird in multiple ways. They can look like known cartoon characters,
Speaker 3: they can look like known alien characters. They can look
Speaker 3: like weird suggestive unknown technology. They're all over the map.
Speaker 3: But I want to add another fact onto this, which is,
Speaker 3: anytime you see an object in the ocean and you're
Speaker 3: tempted to say, this looks weird, and it doesn't look
Speaker 3: like any known organism, so it can't be biological. Keep
Speaker 3: in mind another fact, there are organisms in the ocean
Speaker 3: that have never been photographed, never been described, documented, or classified.
Speaker 3: There are lots of creatures we don't know about yet,
Speaker 3: and you might think, yeah, well, but I mean we've
Speaker 3: probably found most of them, right, I mean, how many
Speaker 3: could there be out there that nobody's ever seen before? Well?
Speaker 3: I dug up a paper from twenty eleven that was
Speaker 3: just trying to estimate and it wasn't commenting on aliens
Speaker 3: or anything. It was just trying to answer a basic question,
Speaker 3: which was how many yet unidentified species are there out
Speaker 3: there in the world that we have not documented yet.
Speaker 3: So the paper was called how Many Species are There
Speaker 3: on Earth and in the Ocean? In plus Biology in
Speaker 3: twenty eleven by Camillo Mora at All and from the
Speaker 3: author's summary they say, quote here we document that the
Speaker 3: taxonomic classification of subspecies into higher taxonomic groups from genera
Speaker 3: to phyla follows a consistent pattern from which the total
Speaker 3: number of species in any taxonomic group can be predicted.
Speaker 3: So does that make sense? They're like, we don't have
Speaker 3: a way to count the species that haven't been found yet,
Speaker 3: but you can come up with a pretty good estimate
Speaker 3: of how many you are out there there, Because we
Speaker 3: know from like the tree of the sort of the
Speaker 3: bush of life in a way how phyla breakdown, you
Speaker 3: can form reasonable estimates of how many organisms are in
Speaker 3: each group, and so just what we know about the
Speaker 3: higher parts of the branches, you can guess how many
Speaker 3: are out there that haven't been documented yet, and their
Speaker 3: estimate is quote. Assessment of this pattern for all kingdoms
Speaker 3: of life on Earth predicts about eight point seven million
Speaker 3: plus or minus an error of one point three million
Speaker 3: species globally, of which about two point two million plus
Speaker 3: or minus an era of zero point eighteen million are marine.
Speaker 3: Our results suggests that some eighty six percent of species
Speaker 3: on Earth and ninety one percent in the ocean still
Speaker 3: await description.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, so there is room for just about everything
Speaker 1: down there. We may find handsome.
Speaker 3: Squids maybe ninety one percent. That is still a lot
Speaker 3: of room to see something bizarre in the ocean that
Speaker 3: matches the appear rants of nothing known to marine biology,
Speaker 3: and then have it turned out to be another sponge
Speaker 3: or just turned out to be another Nigerian or another
Speaker 3: weird crustacean. Remember again that Chondracladia lira. The harp sponge,
Speaker 3: the one that looks, in our opinion, even more like
Speaker 3: technology than the Altanan object was first described in the
Speaker 3: scientific literature in the last decade or so. The first
Speaker 3: articles were from like twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point. I also couldn't help but
Speaker 1: think about the giant squid and all of this, because
Speaker 1: giant squid, based on an expert analysis, they seem to
Speaker 1: be abundant enough in the sea that sperm whales eat
Speaker 1: them by the millions, perhaps even hundreds of millions each year,
Speaker 1: and yet we don't know their true numbers. We didn't
Speaker 1: have any footage of a living giant squid until the
Speaker 1: twenty first century, and mostly new of them from their
Speaker 1: remains or the scars on the outside or the inside
Speaker 1: of sperm whales. You know, it's a highly no organism.
Speaker 1: In this case, it's a pretty big organism, but it's
Speaker 1: an elusive one that lives in an extreme environment, and
Speaker 1: ultimately it illustrates how little we know, even if we
Speaker 1: think we know.
Speaker 3: That is a really excellent point. But so I want
Speaker 3: to come back to thinking about information in allegedly anomalous
Speaker 3: photographs or videos or other things that are used as
Speaker 3: evidence for alien intelligence or alien technology or other paranormal phenomena.
Speaker 3: It seems to me that the photograph of the Eltannan
Speaker 3: object could inspire the belief that it was an antenna
Speaker 3: or was a piece of alien technology because of certain
Speaker 3: low information conditions. So it's a fairly low resolution photographs,
Speaker 3: kind of grainy black and white photograph, or actually, in
Speaker 3: the ways it's reproduced, it's black and white. I don't
Speaker 3: know what it was in the original. I don't know
Speaker 3: if I've ever seen I've never seen like a color
Speaker 3: original of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've just seen the black and white.
Speaker 3: But so in various ways, it's low resolution, and it
Speaker 3: was being shared among people who didn't have important informational context,
Speaker 3: like knowledge of what types of deep sea sponges there
Speaker 3: were and what they look like. So it's in this
Speaker 3: low information environment, with lack of important context and lack
Speaker 3: of resolution in the photo, that it seems viable this
Speaker 3: could be an alien antenna. But like if you had
Speaker 3: gotten a really sharp photograph of this original thing, even
Speaker 3: if you didn't have deep sea knowledge, you'd probably be
Speaker 3: able to look at it and say, ah, just like
Speaker 3: the textures on it. This does look more like something organic.
Speaker 3: This is some kind of organism. And likewise, if the
Speaker 3: people originally looking at it had had knowledge of deep
Speaker 3: sea sponges that already existed at the time the photo
Speaker 3: was taken, they would have been able to say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: this is one of those sponges. So low information or
Speaker 3: low resolution is really it creates a friendly environment for
Speaker 3: for paranormal explanations and mythologies to arise around a piece
Speaker 3: of media or piece of evidence, and Rob, I wonder
Speaker 3: what you think about this. I kind of wonder if
Speaker 3: this is why underwater photos in particular are so popular
Speaker 3: in this in this sort of media domain, in the
Speaker 3: you know, fringe and alternative conspiracy theory domain, there are
Speaker 3: so many videos that are like, you know, mysterious objects
Speaker 3: underwater that are based on like a sonar image or
Speaker 3: a kind of murky photograph taken underwater where you can't
Speaker 3: really tell exactly what you're looking at, but it looks
Speaker 3: weird and so it just like invites you to start
Speaker 3: applying strange stories to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you have and also just trying to interpret
Speaker 1: what you're seeing based on things you have seen before.
Speaker 1: And in some cases, your mind is going to turn
Speaker 1: to technology or architecture, and those are going to be
Speaker 1: the forms that you is to try and make sense
Speaker 1: of this, this this new confusing information.
Speaker 3: The one thing I do want to call out. In fact,
Speaker 3: I found this to be true with the altanna and
Speaker 3: antenna and true with a bunch of these other underwater things.
Speaker 3: There will be like the original image that inspired the
Speaker 3: all the speculation, and then there will be modified, doctored,
Speaker 3: or fully faked versions of that image where people have
Speaker 3: added in new information to make it look more like
Speaker 3: whatever they're saying it is. So they're like versions of
Speaker 3: the altanna and antenna that are not the original image
Speaker 3: that somebody made to look like an antenna.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they're enhancing on their own. And you see
Speaker 1: that with yeah, with this this photo, but also other
Speaker 1: photographs as well, and honestly, it can become a little
Speaker 1: confusing in our modern you know, Google image search world,
Speaker 1: because you'll look up something like this and you'll you'll
Speaker 1: find hopefully you'll still find those original images. Generally, the
Speaker 1: original image is going to be what's grounded on any
Speaker 1: Wikipedia r but on other wikis then it's kind of
Speaker 1: up in the air. You may find that original image
Speaker 1: right next to these enhanced images and and artist interpretations
Speaker 1: of what it might look like if it were an
Speaker 1: antenna built by aliens, if this other thing was a spaceship,
Speaker 1: if this other thing was the work of ancient aliens,
Speaker 1: And yeah, it can be kind of it can be
Speaker 1: kind of confusing.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, there are some other interesting underwater
Speaker 3: anomaly images that have actually pretty pretty good scientific tie
Speaker 3: ins that we can maybe even come back to you
Speaker 3: next week if you wanted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that could be. That could be fun.
Speaker 1: There's also there's there are also a couple of examples
Speaker 1: from ancient Egypt that are often misinterpreted that have fascinating,
Speaker 1: you know, actual stories without having to drag ancient technology
Speaker 1: and ancient aliens into the scenario.
Speaker 3: Perhaps we will return to this subject in the future, all.
Speaker 1: Right, but for now we're going to go ahead and
Speaker 1: close out, and we'll just remind you, Hey, if you
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