Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and it is Saturday. So again we're going
Speaker 1: to the Vault once more, this time for the episode
Speaker 1: another Enigmatic underwater Image. This is a continuation on the
Speaker 1: last Vault episode we did, where we're looking at difficult
Speaker 1: to analyze images from the deep ocean and how they
Speaker 1: can spin off them in the minds of onlookers into
Speaker 1: paranormal intrigue. This one originally published eight fifteen, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: Here we go, let's dive 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 Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick. And hey, we're back to anomalous imagery.
Speaker 3: In the pre episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 3: we were looking at some photographs that people have wanted
Speaker 3: to sort into the proof of Aliens Confirmed column, and
Speaker 3: we ended up talking about reasons why that's not necessarily
Speaker 3: a wise or well informed move, and we thought we
Speaker 3: might come back to talk about more images of this sort.
Speaker 1: And you know what, here we are, Yeah, in the
Speaker 1: last episode, and this is this is a situation where
Speaker 1: it's probably helpful if you listen to that last episode,
Speaker 1: but it's not necessarily a part one in part two,
Speaker 1: so I don't know do what you will regarding these episodes.
Speaker 1: But in the last episode, we discussed the so called
Speaker 1: el tennan antenna, a deep sea photograph of something taken
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty four that ultimately led to a positive
Speaker 1: identification of a specific species of deep sea sponge, but
Speaker 1: also fed a great deal of paranormal and ufology speculation
Speaker 1: about alien technology and global energy grids and the like.
Speaker 1: We discussed how images and data like this that dwell
Speaker 1: in a kind of low res realm of evidence often
Speaker 1: play into arguments for supernatural or other worldly explanations instead
Speaker 1: of mundane natural world explanations.
Speaker 3: That's right. So we were developing an idea somewhat jumping
Speaker 3: off of some offhand terminology use in comments I've heard
Speaker 3: in interviews with a science writer and skeptical UFO researcher
Speaker 3: named Mick West, and I think the phrase I had
Speaker 3: heard him use at some point was the low information zone.
Speaker 3: But we were also talking about the idea of the
Speaker 3: low resolution zone, and so the idea we were developing
Speaker 3: was that it's in cases of evidence containing less information
Speaker 3: or existing in a space of lower resolution that supernatural
Speaker 3: or alien explanations tend to retain the aura of viability.
Speaker 3: They seem to some people like this might be a
Speaker 3: good explanation, And it's in cases of high resolution or
Speaker 3: high information where the photo, if it's a photo where
Speaker 3: it's like really sharp and taken from multiple angles, and
Speaker 3: we have a good idea exactly where and when it
Speaker 3: was taken, maybe other people can go check up on it,
Speaker 3: people with relevant knowledge have had a look at it.
Speaker 3: These are the cases that end up very very often
Speaker 3: having pretty clear explanations from within the known range of
Speaker 3: natural causes. In other words, there seems to be a
Speaker 3: pattern where a fuzzy photo creates way more mythology than
Speaker 3: a sharp one. And I think this is applical, applicable
Speaker 3: in the broader sense, not just in pure resolution of photos,
Speaker 3: but in the general sense of information like evidence, this
Speaker 3: kind of vague and fuzzy and not well situated within
Speaker 3: an informational context seems oh yeah, maybe that is aliens.
Speaker 3: And the further you turn up the resolution, the more
Speaker 3: accurate information and context you have, the more often it
Speaker 3: seems like, oh yeah, that's a plastic bag, or that's
Speaker 3: an airplane, or that's a constellation of stars.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And as we discussed in the last episode, and
Speaker 1: we'll continue to discuss here, to whatever extent, you can
Speaker 1: also cut out the context for the image, or ignore
Speaker 1: the context and or ignore the expertise in a given
Speaker 1: field that could be vital to understanding what you're looking
Speaker 1: at exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the background knowledge of the observer can also
Speaker 3: be one of the information states, and that can be
Speaker 3: high information or low.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's not necessarily a situation either where someone
Speaker 1: is like willfully, I refuse to listen to the experts
Speaker 1: because because you know, I know what I see. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's maybe a little more nuanced than that. So
Speaker 1: I do want to acknowledge that. But just throwing that
Speaker 1: out there as well. We'll come back to the idea
Speaker 1: as we roll farward.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Another one of the ideas we talked about in the
Speaker 3: last episode was how popular it seems underwater images in
Speaker 3: particular are in the UFO slash UAP and general fringe
Speaker 3: explanation idea space. Of course, the Eltannan object was an
Speaker 3: underwater photo, and I mentioned in the last episode the
Speaker 3: idea that apparently anomalous. Underwater images are especially useful nucleation
Speaker 3: points for these types of narratives because they're sort of
Speaker 3: inherently low resolution or low information. The details are often obscured.
Speaker 3: Images of things underwater often look weird, but you can't
Speaker 3: tell exactly what they are, which means you can start
Speaker 3: making up whatever explanation you find the most exciting. And
Speaker 3: I was thinking about how underwater imagery often qualifies as
Speaker 3: low information evidence in multiple dimensions at once, So like
Speaker 3: the original image is usually grainy and indistinct if it's
Speaker 3: taken in visible light, like it's a photograph taken invisible light,
Speaker 3: light conditions are usually low, and sometimes they're is you know,
Speaker 3: is something obscuring the image in the water. Maybe the
Speaker 3: water is cloudy, maybe not. Sometimes the image is not
Speaker 3: even based on visible light. Maybe we're looking at a
Speaker 3: sonar image or something like that, which further complicates your
Speaker 3: ability to identify what it is you're looking at. And
Speaker 3: sometimes things are even obscured in other ways, like partially
Speaker 3: buried or have things on top of them. Beyond all this,
Speaker 3: objects and formations that may be common underwater do not
Speaker 3: seem common to people who spend their lives on land
Speaker 3: and on the surface. Think of the sponge we talked
Speaker 3: about last time. If you lived on the ocean floor,
Speaker 3: you'd probably recognize that. You would be like a tree
Speaker 3: to you. You know, you've seen lots of these before,
Speaker 3: but not living on the ocean floor. That's totally weird.
Speaker 3: You've never seen anything like it. You have no idea
Speaker 3: what it could be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as we touched on in that one, the so
Speaker 1: called antenna occurred as a singular object without any fellow
Speaker 1: antenna around it in this one photograph. Previous dredges in
Speaker 1: the deep ocean had revealed places where they seem to
Speaker 1: be quite numerous.
Speaker 3: That's right. Sometimes they're kind of a forest, but in
Speaker 3: this case it wasn't. It was just one standing alone
Speaker 3: in the image. So that I don't know, that mean
Speaker 3: to seem more monolithic and kind of strange and dangerous
Speaker 3: and inviting of calling out for some kind of otherworldly explanation. Finally,
Speaker 3: I was thinking about one more thing about the low
Speaker 3: information nature of underwater images, especially in the case of
Speaker 3: deep sea objects. It's difficult, expensive, and sometimes impossible for
Speaker 3: other people to check the object for themselves because it's
Speaker 3: on the bottom of the ocean, So you are unlikely
Speaker 3: to get somebody else imaging the same thing with different
Speaker 3: equipment in different conditions to get more context and clarity.
Speaker 3: Unless it's like a really famous and valuable thing and
Speaker 3: you've you know, published coordinates of exactly where it is,
Speaker 3: there's like huge interest in it. Maybe, but like for
Speaker 3: the most part, if you're talking about something on the
Speaker 3: bottom of the ocean, whatever imagery you release of it
Speaker 3: that you initially produce, it's that you know that that's
Speaker 3: going to be all there is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, Because I mean, ultimately, whether your idea is
Speaker 1: based in just pure scientific inquiry or if it's based
Speaker 1: in some sort of paranormal interest or some sort of
Speaker 1: fringe theory, you're still going to have to somehow get
Speaker 1: that funding together to pay for an expedition to an
Speaker 1: extreme environment. And you know, are the numbers going to
Speaker 1: add up at the end of the day.
Speaker 3: And in some cases, I think it might be more
Speaker 3: financially lucrative for an object to remain in the low
Speaker 3: information zone than it would be to increase the information
Speaker 3: because that might well dispel the mystique surrounding it.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Yes, Because as we touched on in the first episode.
Speaker 1: You know, these images become kind of articles of faith
Speaker 1: within a given belief system, within a given worldview, and yeah,
Speaker 1: you go down there, there's you've got to admit, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, lining up with your hopes and dreams. Maybe
Speaker 1: you'll get that high res image of this thing and
Speaker 1: it will literally change the way we think about ourselves
Speaker 1: and we think about the world. But what are the
Speaker 1: chances that you'll just know it'll be that face on
Speaker 1: Mars scenario, you know where Oh well, you realize that
Speaker 1: once you have some different imagery, some different information to
Speaker 1: go on, the face is not there at all, and
Speaker 1: then how are you going to feel?
Speaker 3: So this brings us to the particular underwater image that
Speaker 3: you dug up, Rob that we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 3: This image is the so called Baltic Sea anomaly. Would
Speaker 3: you like to introduce it?
Speaker 1: Sure? Yeah. I found this the way probably I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people find it is that you find
Speaker 1: these various lists of strange, unexplained things beneath the ocean,
Speaker 1: and they're generally they're generally a weird array of objects
Speaker 1: and alleged objects, some of which are verified realities, some
Speaker 1: are you know, blurry, low res images. But yeah, this
Speaker 1: and this sonar image was taken by Swedish Ocean X
Speaker 1: on the floor of the Northern Baltic Sea at the
Speaker 1: center of the Gulf of Bothnia in June twenty eleven
Speaker 1: during a hunt for I believe possible sunken treasure. So
Speaker 1: they were on the lookout with their imagery for you know,
Speaker 1: things that might be ships, things that might be man
Speaker 1: made objects on the bottom. Now, the image that came
Speaker 1: out of all of this, the sonar image, has captured
Speaker 1: the imagination of ufologists because it does look roundish and
Speaker 1: many illustrations and I want to stress that illustrations based
Speaker 1: on this imagery readily, and these will readily come up
Speaker 1: and search for you. Don't worry. You don't have to
Speaker 1: look hard for them. In fact, it's harder to sort
Speaker 1: of wean them out and just focus on the sonar
Speaker 1: data they lean into. This kind of interpretation of this
Speaker 1: roundish object is perhaps a millennium Falcon s spaceship, or
Speaker 1: perhaps something akin to the ship that the engineers have
Speaker 1: in the Alien franchise.
Speaker 3: I was thinking something that, yeah, from Prometheus. It looks
Speaker 3: like that technology style.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is an iconic derelict spaceship that has mysteries
Speaker 1: aboard that we absolutely should on Earth, We actually absolutely
Speaker 1: should get in there and get some of that right.
Speaker 3: But I guess for now we're just going to focus
Speaker 3: on this original sonar image that was released to the
Speaker 3: media back in the summer of twenty eleven by again
Speaker 3: Ocean X, which is this Swedish treasure hunting and salvage
Speaker 3: diving operation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the actual image here is definitely in the low
Speaker 1: information zone, and various critics have pointed this out as
Speaker 1: a reason that not much can be made out of it,
Speaker 1: aside from the consensus that we're almost certainly looking at
Speaker 1: a geologic formation here and not a spaceship, not part
Speaker 1: of a lost city on the bottom of the ocean,
Speaker 1: some part of a lot of civilization. Their whole article
Speaker 1: speculating that as well. And you know, it's it's worth
Speaker 1: driving home that like these ideas, just as pure ideas,
Speaker 1: are very exciting, Like who wouldn't want to learn more
Speaker 1: about a possible alien spaceship on the bottom of the ocean.
Speaker 1: Who would want to hear more about a lost city
Speaker 1: that was you know, Atlantis style that was swallowed up
Speaker 1: by the waves in ancient times, but more likely than anything,
Speaker 1: this is just geology down there, and if you're into geology,
Speaker 1: it's pretty exciting. But I guess we have to sort
Speaker 1: of look at the at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: perhaps geology doesn't have necessarily as much of an excitement
Speaker 1: value in the mainstream or certainly in the in the fringe.
Speaker 1: So if you're if you're given two possibilities, even though
Speaker 1: one is far more likely, some people are just going
Speaker 1: to go for the the sexier answer, and of course
Speaker 1: the answer that confirms or seems to confirm some ideas
Speaker 1: and aspirations one has for the universe.
Speaker 3: Interpretations I've come across in addition to saying this is
Speaker 3: an alien spacecraft. Oh and by the way, I should say,
Speaker 3: early articles about this from around the time it was
Speaker 3: first released often like would draw outlines around parts of
Speaker 3: this sonar image, like asking you to lean into certain
Speaker 3: shape interpretations, And one of the outlines that was often
Speaker 3: drawn was essentially the millennium falcon. So they there's a
Speaker 3: weird kind of space where they can almost like if
Speaker 3: you're a journalist doing an article and drawing an outline
Speaker 3: like that, you can be like, oh, it's just funny.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a funny joke, but also you probably
Speaker 3: know that you are getting some traffic from like playing
Speaker 3: into the hand of UFO interpretations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've also seen some where they're like, okay, these
Speaker 1: are stairs and then this is you know, pointing out
Speaker 1: like architectural supposed architectural details on this object. And you know, again,
Speaker 1: you're you're a lot of people they're seeing this image
Speaker 1: for the first time. You're giving them all the interpretation,
Speaker 1: given the full script for interpreting this low res image.
Speaker 3: Right, But anyway to come back to so, there are
Speaker 3: a lot of people who say, yeah, this is a
Speaker 3: crashed alien flying saucer, or crashed alien spacecraft or crashed
Speaker 3: ancient human spacecraft from lost you know, lost technology from
Speaker 3: an ancient civilization. There are also people who say it
Speaker 3: was a monument built by the Atlantean civilization, So they
Speaker 3: say Atlantis built this, it was like a temple. There
Speaker 3: are various flavors of secret Nazi interpretations. It's a it's
Speaker 3: a U boat model we've never seen before, some kind
Speaker 3: of underwater Nazi bunker.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, obviously there's a great deal of Nazi stuff.
Speaker 1: Once you get into the paranormal in fringe movements.
Speaker 3: But what does it actually look like? I mean, if
Speaker 3: you take away the outlines and everything, what we can
Speaker 3: see in this image is that it is a kind
Speaker 3: of roughly sur killer looking texture on the ocean floor
Speaker 3: that has some parallel lines kind of running across it that,
Speaker 3: you know, you could well want to interprets as I
Speaker 3: don't know something they're like grooves or tracks or walkways,
Speaker 3: but also they could just be like layers of rock.
Speaker 1: You know. One of these images you included where it's
Speaker 1: been traced. It looks kind of like I'm going to
Speaker 1: I'm gonna throw this out there. It looks kind of
Speaker 1: like one of the helmets of the giant warriors from
Speaker 1: Nausacaa the Valley of the Wind like on its side.
Speaker 1: So perhaps this is a remnant from that time before
Speaker 1: the Seven Days of Fire.
Speaker 3: Oh well, we certainly wouldn't want to awake it then,
Speaker 3: but meddlesome men and their war machines they want to anyway.
Speaker 3: So other claims about this image, So they say the
Speaker 3: people who discovered it say that the disc part of
Speaker 3: the object is roughly sixty meters wide or about two
Speaker 3: hundred feet wide in diameter. It was found on the
Speaker 3: ocean floor at a depth of about ninety meters or
Speaker 3: three hundred feet. Okay, so actually not that deep when
Speaker 3: it comes to ocean or seafloor. And again this is
Speaker 3: in the Gulf of Bothnia, which is the northern part
Speaker 3: of the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland. Peter Lindberg,
Speaker 3: one of the explorers behind the original image, claimed that
Speaker 3: the object was perfectly round, and there is a sort
Speaker 3: of light colored area on the seafloor extending away from
Speaker 3: the disc shaped object that people say could be a
Speaker 3: runway or a streak cut in the seafloor from a
Speaker 3: crash landing. And then the next thing, this one starts
Speaker 3: being a real red flag for me. At some point,
Speaker 3: ocean X started saying that they tried to return to
Speaker 3: the object and get more information about it and imagery
Speaker 3: of it, and they said that proximity to the object
Speaker 3: was causing all of their electronic equipment to function, and
Speaker 3: they couldn't come within I think they said two hundred
Speaker 3: meters of the object without all of their electronics failing. Hmm.
Speaker 3: I'm a little doubtful of that kind of story.
Speaker 1: You know, given that this is near Finland. I would
Speaker 1: be shocked if no one has suggested that it might
Speaker 1: be the lost Sampo, which of course is this object
Speaker 1: from Finnish mythology that was essentially like it brought riches
Speaker 1: and good fortune and treasures. It was this font of wealth,
Speaker 1: and if memory serves like the myth is that it
Speaker 1: was lost at sea during a battle. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: it sounds like it could be the Sampo. If I'm
Speaker 1: going to lean into mythology for my.
Speaker 3: Interpretations, do they say what the Sampo looks like.
Speaker 1: I've seen some illustrations where it is actually kind of
Speaker 1: kind of round, Yeah, but I think maybe smaller. I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 3: Okay, Wiki at least mentions a bunch of different ways
Speaker 3: it's been depicted, and they are wide ranging, so I
Speaker 3: would guess in the original they don't say the shape
Speaker 3: it takes, but it says here it could be anything
Speaker 3: from a world pillar to a compass or astrolabe, or
Speaker 3: a bunch of other things, a coin, dye, a shield.
Speaker 3: So why not a giant disc at the bottom of
Speaker 3: the ocean.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: One of the reasons that people say this must be
Speaker 3: a spaceship or some other piece of out of place
Speaker 3: technology is I think, essentially an intuitive reaction to certain
Speaker 3: patterns of geometry. When you look at this sonar image,
Speaker 3: it appears to be a large circular disc. In some versions,
Speaker 3: the circular disc appears to be made out of smaller
Speaker 3: rectangles or squares, and a circle filled in with rectangles
Speaker 3: or squares. That doesn't sound like any natural object I've
Speaker 3: ever seen, so it just looks like it could not
Speaker 3: be natural. It had to be made. Now regarding the
Speaker 3: square tile or rectangular tiles appearance in this particular sonar image,
Speaker 3: the one we've been looking at here, there are different
Speaker 3: versions of it you can find on the Internet. But
Speaker 3: even the fact that it appears to be made of
Speaker 3: the rectangular blocks or tiles, I think is actually somewhat
Speaker 3: influenced by the fact that the image has some sort
Speaker 3: of digital artifact lines running parallel from top to bottom
Speaker 3: across the image. And these parallel bars crossing the image
Speaker 3: are not just on the object, but they're covering the
Speaker 3: whole bitmap, and thus they are obviously a byproduct of
Speaker 3: the imaging process, not a reflection of the object itself.
Speaker 3: The image is also lined up so that these parallel
Speaker 3: lines are exactly perpendicular to some ridges or lines that
Speaker 3: seem to actually be on the object whatever it is,
Speaker 3: that seem to sort of run parallel across it. So
Speaker 3: I think these digital imaging artifacts create a false impression
Speaker 3: of a kind of right angled brickwork pattern that is
Speaker 3: not actually present on the object itself. That's just a
Speaker 3: byproduct of the way the image looks with these lines
Speaker 3: running up and down on it. On the images we see.
Speaker 3: Second thing is, Rob, you already mentioned this, but the illustrations.
Speaker 3: This is another case, just like we talked about last time,
Speaker 3: of what was originally a low resolution or low information
Speaker 3: piece of evidence being subject to mythologizing in grandiose elaborations
Speaker 3: in artworks. So if you Google image search this object,
Speaker 3: results containing the actual sonar image will be vastly outnumbered
Speaker 3: by full on fictional illustrations. I've included a few for
Speaker 3: you to look at here, Rob, Folks at home, you
Speaker 3: can look them up yourself, just type in Baltic Sea anomaly.
Speaker 3: To be clear, these are not photos of the actual object.
Speaker 3: They are imaginative artworks. All of the interesting and provocative
Speaker 3: sharp detail shown in them is made up. But articles
Speaker 3: and videos about the object seem to use things like this. Nonetheless,
Speaker 3: it's kind of like, look, here's one way of imagining
Speaker 3: what this could look like up close if you could
Speaker 3: see it sharply. And for some people this seems to
Speaker 3: suggest it's legitimate to assume that's the way it actually is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and be clear, this can also take place at
Speaker 1: kind of a subliminal consumer level where you just you
Speaker 1: pull up a bunch of images of this thing, and yeah,
Speaker 1: most of the ones on your page are going to
Speaker 1: be perhaps leaning into some sort of fantastic illustration, and
Speaker 1: the illustrations are cool, Like you can't help but look
Speaker 1: at this and feel a certain kind of way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, don't want to knock the artists, but I mean
Speaker 3: just like to emphasize these are not images of a
Speaker 3: thing in the world. These are essentially fictional artworks that
Speaker 3: are based on a grainy, indistinct original image.
Speaker 1: Now I want to throw out another wild speculation. What
Speaker 1: if this is a tetromino or a tetris block, And really,
Speaker 1: instead of trying to get down there to it, what
Speaker 1: we need to do is construct a tetromino to interlock
Speaker 1: with it and drop it down and make sure that
Speaker 1: we have lined it up appropriately so that it will
Speaker 1: fill in the space next to it.
Speaker 3: Well, that's a great point, but it would have to
Speaker 3: be a kind of hybrid game piece because it like
Speaker 3: one half of it seems to be a tetronomo. It's
Speaker 3: got the blocky parts that seem like they could interlock,
Speaker 3: and then the other half is rounded like a connect
Speaker 3: four piece. So maybe it is for a hybrid type
Speaker 3: game something we haven't seen yet.
Speaker 1: I mean, this does touch on the rea. It's like
Speaker 1: it's not square enough. It's not it doesn't have enough
Speaker 1: right angles that it really shouts unnatural object as loudly
Speaker 1: as some would perhaps insist that it does. It's also
Speaker 1: not round enough, it doesn't have the end. Would not
Speaker 1: in either case necessarily mean that it is not of
Speaker 1: this world, but certainly like those are the sorts of
Speaker 1: shapes one would want to see in their spaceship. You
Speaker 1: would want to see a more perfect circle, You would
Speaker 1: want to see a lot of angles that we usually
Speaker 1: don't think of as occurring naturally in nature.
Speaker 3: We will come back to in a minute commentary on
Speaker 3: this Sonari image itself and what kind of conclusions we
Speaker 3: should draw from it. But let's say that this did
Speaker 3: actually depict an object to the bottom of the ocean
Speaker 3: that had that looked like it had sort of some
Speaker 3: blocks or some rectangular bricks in it. In the spirit
Speaker 3: of the previous episodes, let's talk about sponges that look
Speaker 3: like technology. I think it's time for it. Let's talk
Speaker 3: about natural rock formations that look like architecture. There are
Speaker 3: lots of them. You can just google lists of things
Speaker 3: that are natural geologic formations that look like things made
Speaker 3: by humans or made by intelligence, maybe alien intelligence. So
Speaker 3: I wanted to just focus on one example because I
Speaker 3: thought the images were so striking. Let's look at what
Speaker 3: is called tessellated pavement. Now, to be clear, I'm not
Speaker 3: saying that's what this is an image of. I'm just
Speaker 3: citing this as an example of things that are natural
Speaker 3: geologic formations that totally look like they could not be
Speaker 3: that they must have been made by intelligence. Rob, you
Speaker 3: can have a look at the photos I included for you.
Speaker 3: How would you describe these?
Speaker 1: So one of these images, the one with the sunset
Speaker 1: over it, This is one of my favorite images. I
Speaker 1: used to have this on my computer, as was one
Speaker 1: of my desktop wall papers. It's just so splendid. To
Speaker 1: look at, and it does. It looks kind of otherworldly.
Speaker 1: It has a psychedelic feel to it. It just makes you
Speaker 1: feel nice. A couple of the other images of this
Speaker 1: sort of thing maybe let feel less surreal, less visionary,
Speaker 1: and more like, oh, this was once a shopping mall
Speaker 1: of some sort, Like clearly some sort of structure was
Speaker 1: built here and it's gone. So I don't know, shopping
Speaker 1: malls of the gods.
Speaker 3: Okay, but you're saying shopping mall because it's got rectangular
Speaker 3: paving stones right where you're looking at, like a flat
Speaker 3: expanse of rock that reaches out into the surf so
Speaker 3: you can see the ocean beyond, and then all across
Speaker 3: the surface of this rock there are just rectangular tiles basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, rectangular tiles, rectangular spaces, and you get this sense
Speaker 1: like if you've ever seen a large building like a
Speaker 1: you know, a storage facility, factory or a mall, and
Speaker 1: it's been torn down, like and the junk has been
Speaker 1: cleared away and you're just left with the with the base,
Speaker 1: it often looks something like this, you know, where you
Speaker 1: can see where rooms used to be, you can see
Speaker 1: bits of tiling, et cetera. So yeah, it it's whispers
Speaker 1: some sort of human origin when you look at it,
Speaker 1: if you again, if you don't have the proper context
Speaker 1: and the proper expertise.
Speaker 3: So all of these photos that you're looking at here
Speaker 3: rob are of the same rock formation which can be
Speaker 3: found on an isthmus in the Australian state of Tasmania.
Speaker 3: The isthmus is called the Eagle Hawk Neck and it's
Speaker 3: on the southeast of Tasmania, connecting the mainland to the
Speaker 3: Tasman Peninsula. I mentioned that these formations are known as
Speaker 3: tessellated pavements. Tesselated as a synonym for tiled, so it
Speaker 3: means the practice of covering a surface with tightly locking tiles.
Speaker 3: And it's called this because, of course it looks like
Speaker 3: a tiled floor or a pavement made by human hands. Now,
Speaker 3: how on Earth could natural processes ever produce something that
Speaker 3: looks like this? Well, I found a passage in an
Speaker 3: academic book that discusses this very thing. So the book's
Speaker 3: called The Coastlines of the World with Google Earth Understanding
Speaker 3: Our Environment by Scheffers, Scheffers and Keletot, published by Springer
Speaker 3: twenty twelve. The authors say that these formations are rare,
Speaker 3: and they seem to only occur in sedimentary rock platforms
Speaker 3: located in the intertidal zone. Intertitle means that the rocks
Speaker 3: are covered by seawater at high tide and then uncovered
Speaker 3: at low tide, so they can go through patterns of
Speaker 3: wedding with seawater and then drying out. And they also
Speaker 3: tend to occur only in low energy coasts, meaning coasts
Speaker 3: without very strong wave action. So the authors write that
Speaker 3: these tesselated patterns in Tasmania in particular, began millions of
Speaker 3: years ago when fractures formed in siltstone due to stress
Speaker 3: in the Earth's crust sometime between like sixty million and
Speaker 3: one hundred and sixty million years ago. In geology, these
Speaker 3: cracks that form in large bodies of rock are known
Speaker 3: as joints, and they're found in all kinds of rock,
Speaker 3: most often appearing as patterns of crack that extend all
Speaker 3: the way through this big body of rock, and sometimes,
Speaker 3: for a variety of reasons, these patterns can be parallel
Speaker 3: or otherwise surprisingly regular and symmetrical. Another striking pattern of
Speaker 3: jointing in large bodies of rock that might look unnatural
Speaker 3: to some is hexagonal jointing. If you've ever seen columns
Speaker 3: of basalt that have hexagonal shapes, that that's another type
Speaker 3: of strange jointing that doesn't look like that could happen
Speaker 3: in nature, but it does. That's caused by just patterns
Speaker 3: of how certain types of rock cool and then crack
Speaker 3: as they cool. In the case of the tessellated pavements,
Speaker 3: here you get kind of rectangular patterns of cracks. And
Speaker 3: in the time since the jointing occurred in this rock,
Speaker 3: the cracked sedimentary rock has been exposed to the surface
Speaker 3: and the tides which have caused it to erode in
Speaker 3: a way that accentuated the rectangular grade of cracks in
Speaker 3: what's known as pan and loaf formation. So the basic
Speaker 3: difference here is that some of these rectangles seem to
Speaker 3: be sort of raised at the outline and then depressed
Speaker 3: in the middle where they can hold pools of water
Speaker 3: in them, and then other ones seem to be kind
Speaker 3: of raised in the middle and depressed at the outline,
Speaker 3: so in the middle they sort of puff up like
Speaker 3: a maybe like a cobble stone or like the top
Speaker 3: of a loaf of bread rising over the pan. The
Speaker 3: author's right that at areas farther away from the contact
Speaker 3: with the water, the pavement spends a longer time drying
Speaker 3: out during low tide, which gives more opportunity for salt
Speaker 3: crystals to form on top of the rock, and the
Speaker 3: salt crystals erode the rock surface, and the erosion happens
Speaker 3: faster inside the pan than it does in the cracks
Speaker 3: around the pan, you know, forming the rim. So you
Speaker 3: end up with this depressed pan appearance where it can
Speaker 3: hold pools of water. Meanwhile, the loaf formation are closer
Speaker 3: to the water, there's less drying in between tides, less
Speaker 3: salt crystal, less salt crystallization, and more erosion just due
Speaker 3: to water flowing in the cracks in between the rectangles
Speaker 3: and like sand and abrasion eroding those. So you end
Speaker 3: up getting this raised, puffed bread like kind of appearance. Rob,
Speaker 3: I've got another image for you to look at that
Speaker 3: is more of the loaf formation down below here. This
Speaker 3: is the one in black and white, and man, these
Speaker 3: really really do look like human made bricks. But it's
Speaker 3: a natural formation.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean, if you just glanced at it,
Speaker 1: even if you I don't know, I guess if you
Speaker 1: looked at it long enough, you might wonder why the
Speaker 1: bricks are not of uniform size, but certainly it's smacks
Speaker 1: of masonry. It smacks of brickwork.
Speaker 3: So that's just one example, but I hope that should
Speaker 3: be a convincing illustration yet again that we should not
Speaker 3: always trust our intuitions about what looks natural and what
Speaker 3: looks intelligently designed. We are presented with example after example
Speaker 3: of things that look like they must be technology, or
Speaker 3: they must be architecture, they must have been built by
Speaker 3: intention and intelligence, but are actually just totally, uncontroversially a
Speaker 3: result of biological evolution or geological and hydrological processes, just
Speaker 3: things that happen in nature without any human intervention or
Speaker 3: alien intervention. So my point there is that without the
Speaker 3: relevant expertise since a marine biology or geology or whatever
Speaker 3: it is, it's easy to sort something into the unexplainable column,
Speaker 3: when in fact it's just like totally looks like something
Speaker 3: that is well known if you happen to know about
Speaker 3: certain things.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: But to come back to the sonar image from the
Speaker 3: Baltic Sea, the Baltic Sea nomaly, which again some are
Speaker 3: quick to label an anomaly in need of explanation based
Speaker 3: in Aliens or Atlantis or secret Nazi technology. Again, all
Speaker 3: of this speculation is only possible because we're operating in
Speaker 3: the zone of low resolution. One problem here is that
Speaker 3: you and I and most people looking at this image
Speaker 3: lack context. We don't know much about the Baltic Sea floor.
Speaker 3: We also don't know anything about how sonar images are produced.
Speaker 3: Is it possible that we could get a higher information
Speaker 3: perspective by asking somebody who knows about those things? So
Speaker 3: I came across an article published in February twenty twelve
Speaker 3: in Popular Mechanics called Underwater UFO Get Real Experts Say,
Speaker 3: by Douglas Main. And this article consulted several experts for
Speaker 3: perspective on this sonar image. One was Hanumant Singh, who
Speaker 3: was at the time a researcher with the Woods Hull
Speaker 3: Oceanographic Institute. I think now he's a professor at Northeastern
Speaker 3: University who has a number of research focuses I found,
Speaker 3: including robotics and things in that domain, but also quote
Speaker 3: imaging in visually degraded environments, including underwater and in polar regions.
Speaker 1: Oh that's perfect.
Speaker 3: So what did Singh have to say? About the anomaly well.
Speaker 3: He cautioned that we should not put too much trust
Speaker 3: in the sonar image itself for a number of reasons.
Speaker 3: He says it was created using a type of sonar
Speaker 3: technology called side scan sonar, which is perfectly useful for
Speaker 3: locating large objects like sunken ships, but could potentially introduce
Speaker 3: false details into an image if it's not functioning correctly,
Speaker 3: and he cited several indications in the image itself that
Speaker 3: the sonar should not be trusted. He said that there
Speaker 3: are signs of cross talk between the two different instruments
Speaker 3: that are used to create the image. He says one
Speaker 3: channel is electrically contaminating the other, and this results in
Speaker 3: parts of the image on one side being mirrored and
Speaker 3: reflected on to the other side of the map. He
Speaker 3: also says that the black parallel lines in the image
Speaker 3: I already mentioned these earlier just because I didn't have
Speaker 3: any expertise, but I just noticed that these create the
Speaker 3: false impression that the disc is more made of rectangular
Speaker 3: blocks than it probably actually is. He said that these
Speaker 3: black parallel lines in the image showed that there are
Speaker 3: places where the sonar is dropping out, so that's an
Speaker 3: image quality problem. He also says that the edges of
Speaker 3: the image have lost detail, also showing that the sonar
Speaker 3: is not calibrated properly. This article also consulted someone named
Speaker 3: Charles Paul, who is a senior scientist at the Monterey
Speaker 3: Bay Aquarium Research Institute, who said that even if the
Speaker 3: sonar image is roughly is a roughly accurate picture of
Speaker 3: what's down there, there's no reason to think it's a spaceship.
Speaker 3: It could be, first of all, a roughly circular rock outcropping.
Speaker 3: No reason that's implausible, or he says quote the result
Speaker 3: of fluid or gas venting. Such venting causes inexplicable and
Speaker 3: poorly understood structures like pock marks circular depressions that Paul
Speaker 3: has seen are all around the world. In one area
Speaker 3: off California alone, he says he has mapped more than
Speaker 3: fourteen hundred such pock marks. So gas venting from the
Speaker 3: seafloor can cause unusual formations. That's something you wouldn't know
Speaker 3: if you weren't familiar with looking at the seafloor. Another
Speaker 3: possible explanation, which I thought was very interesting, Remember how
Speaker 3: this thing is actually not all that deep. It's only
Speaker 3: about three hundred feet down, and because it's not all
Speaker 3: that deep, Paul says it could be a pattern created
Speaker 3: by a fishing troll.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 3: For example, Paul says the jaws or opening of a
Speaker 3: troll could easily have struck the bottom elsewhere and dropped
Speaker 3: a disk like mound of sediment or a trail of
Speaker 3: pebbles that make up the track marks, he says. Another
Speaker 3: option mentioned in this article, Hana mont Singh, even said
Speaker 3: that the original image could have been produced by fish.
Speaker 3: He describes how the use of side scans sonar can
Speaker 3: produce all sorts of confusing images and often has to
Speaker 3: be double checked by passing back again from another angle
Speaker 3: to really figure out what it was you saw on
Speaker 3: the first pass. Now I wanted to mention one more
Speaker 3: article from twenty twelve that addresses this and interviews a
Speaker 3: irrelevant expert who had access to some materials that may
Speaker 3: have been from the object. This article is by the
Speaker 3: science writer Natalie Wolkover. It's from August thirtieth, twenty twelve,
Speaker 3: called Mysterious Baltic Sea object is a glacial deposit, so
Speaker 3: this article was written after the head of this or
Speaker 3: one of the heads of this Ocean X group. Peter
Speaker 3: Lindberg was in the media again and had been making statements,
Speaker 3: I think on a radio program about the nature of
Speaker 3: the seafloor object being very mysterious and unsolved and baffling
Speaker 3: to scientists. He claimed it had stare formations that may
Speaker 3: have been constructed, and it seemed to be being kind
Speaker 3: of ambiguous, but saying things like if this is Atlantis,
Speaker 3: that would be amazing. Now. Apparently the explorers who discovered
Speaker 3: this sonar image at one point gave some rock samples
Speaker 3: to a researcher in Sweden named Vulkar Brukert, who is
Speaker 3: an associate professor of geology at Stockholm University. Gave him
Speaker 3: some rocks for analysis. These rocks I couldn't find a
Speaker 3: lot about exactly how they were sourced, but they allegedly
Speaker 3: came from the object, so I guess they're claiming to
Speaker 3: have collected them on a dive. Brukert was then quoted
Speaker 3: in a Swedish tabloid in a way that ambiguously suggested
Speaker 3: he might be like it's kind of an ambiguous quote.
Speaker 3: He says, you know, oh, it's surprising to find this
Speaker 3: black rock here, and the ambiguity suggests he might be
Speaker 3: signing on to the idea that this object is actually
Speaker 3: quite mysterious and unexplainable by science. But when other journalists
Speaker 3: followed up with him, this same scholar was not of
Speaker 3: that opinion at all, that it was like a baffling
Speaker 3: unexplainable thing. He said that the rocks they gave him,
Speaker 3: whether they came from the object or not, were mostly
Speaker 3: just ordinary seafloor rocks, with one exception, which was a
Speaker 3: piece of basaltic rock, which is made out of hardened
Speaker 3: lava and not normally the kind of rock you'd find
Speaker 3: all over the floor of the Baltic Sea. But it's
Speaker 3: still not all that baffling because rocks get moved around,
Speaker 3: and in this case, it's very likely this kind of
Speaker 3: rock could have been left at the bottom of the
Speaker 3: Baltic Sea by a glacier, Brookert says in a statement
Speaker 3: given for this article. Quote because the whole northern Baltic
Speaker 3: region is so heavily influenced by glacial thawing processes, both
Speaker 3: the feature and the rock samples are likely to have
Speaker 3: formed in connection with glacial and post glacial processes. He wrote,
Speaker 3: possibly these rocks were transported there by glaciers. So this
Speaker 3: is another fascinating thing about nature. You know, nature is
Speaker 3: very weird. Glaciers can get rock stuck in them. They
Speaker 3: pick up a rock from one place, carry that rock
Speaker 3: to another place as the glaciers move. Then when the
Speaker 3: glacier melts, it drops the rock, and this leaves behind
Speaker 3: rocks that are called glacial erratics, rocks that are out
Speaker 3: of place because a glacier carried them to the place
Speaker 3: where they now rest.
Speaker 1: Now, this is obviously a slow process compared to the
Speaker 1: imagined fast process of alien spaceship settling down from the
Speaker 1: bud the bottom of the sea.
Speaker 3: Right, So I would say, based on everything I've read
Speaker 3: about this, we don't really know what the object in
Speaker 3: this sonar image is. But this one geologist suggests that
Speaker 3: the best guess is that it's some sort of rock
Speaker 3: formation left over by the freezing and thawing of glaciers
Speaker 3: from the last glacial maximum, from the last peak of
Speaker 3: the ice age. So I don't think I would sort
Speaker 3: this one exactly like the Eltannan and antenna, where in
Speaker 3: that case I would say it's, you know, ninety nine
Speaker 3: point nine percent certain we know exactly what that image
Speaker 3: is of you have the right context, you can identify it.
Speaker 3: In this case, it seems like there's a little more
Speaker 3: wiggle room. It's like, this is a grainy image. We
Speaker 3: don't know what it was exactly, And there are some
Speaker 3: good candidates, but there's not really enough information to zero
Speaker 3: in on one and be certain and looking for more
Speaker 3: recent sources on this good lord, there are some, but
Speaker 3: they are mostly hosted on like tabloid sites that felt
Speaker 3: like they were just made of high density malware. They
Speaker 3: would make numerous unbelievable sounding claims, like repeating the stuff
Speaker 3: about how like all of the electronics malfunctioned when they
Speaker 3: tried to get near the object again, and they would
Speaker 3: lean heavily on images that appeared to be fake without
Speaker 3: clarifying where the images came from, which I find very annoying. Also,
Speaker 3: they don't appear to like I'm fine with using like
Speaker 3: fake illustrations if it's clearly labeled like this is not
Speaker 3: the object, this is an you know, an artist's imagination.
Speaker 3: But also like they don't appear to add much of
Speaker 3: anything new except additional wild claims from the Internet. For example,
Speaker 3: vague claims I read on some article with no sourcing
Speaker 3: that the object contains metals not possible to produce on Earth,
Speaker 3: So I just I don't know if that's worth addressing.
Speaker 3: But as far as I can tell, this is sort
Speaker 3: of peak low information zone, right. It's an indistinct and
Speaker 3: grainy but weird looking original photo produced with a fragile
Speaker 3: imaging system that is well known to spit out all
Speaker 3: kinds of errors and artifacts, and it is presented to
Speaker 3: the media in a way that encourages interesting unusual explanations, like,
Speaker 3: you know, for example, just drawing the spaceship outline around
Speaker 3: it is kind of like, hey, you know, maybe think
Speaker 3: about it as a spaceship, or saying that it might
Speaker 3: be constructed as if, you know, by an ancient civilization
Speaker 3: or something, and then coming up with a story about
Speaker 3: why you can't produce more high quality images, electrical equipment,
Speaker 3: malfunctions in the vicinity, et cetera. So I don't know.
Speaker 3: I checked in, and it seems like the explorers are
Speaker 3: they had at some point been working on a documentary
Speaker 3: about this, and we're claiming that there would be more
Speaker 3: to come about it. But I would say, I don't know.
Speaker 3: For now, this is it's stuck in that low resolution,
Speaker 3: low information area, and if we were to get better
Speaker 3: information on it, I strongly suspect it would turn out
Speaker 3: to be just a kind of interestingly shaped rock.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would turn out to be either an interestingly
Speaker 1: shaped rock or there would be nothing. And in a way,
Speaker 1: that's the worst answer, right, because you can always just
Speaker 1: move the goalpost on it. You can say, well, I
Speaker 1: guess the ship moved also was a functional spaceship, and
Speaker 1: so the mystery continues in a way that proves what
Speaker 1: we thought it was. Or hey, if anyone wants to
Speaker 1: take up my Sampo theory, well, clearly some of the
Speaker 1: major powers of this world saw that it was the Sampo,
Speaker 1: and they went and claimed the Sampo, and they are
Speaker 1: busy getting the Sampo back online somewhere to produce, you know,
Speaker 1: unlimited riches. But in either case, you know, it's like,
Speaker 1: like we've been saying, it's it's it's a far simpler
Speaker 1: exercise to turn to explanations for which we have additional
Speaker 1: data that we can We can look at other rock
Speaker 1: formations and say, yes, this is potentially the sort of
Speaker 1: thing that's happening here. We can look at other glacial
Speaker 1: situations and say, yeah, this is potentially the model at
Speaker 1: work here, and we have examples of this model. Whereas
Speaker 1: when you turn to UFOs, when you turn to the
Speaker 1: law City of Atlantis or the Sampo, you know, these
Speaker 1: are not things for which we have any additional reputable
Speaker 1: data to really throw in to compare it to.
Speaker 3: There are no solid examples of those to compare it to. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 3: there are a lack of dependable analogies, which, yeah, should
Speaker 3: should make you hesitate before resorting to that kind of explanation.
Speaker 3: And then the other thing again is just like when
Speaker 3: you're in the low resolution zone or the low information zone,
Speaker 3: it's okay to just reserve judgment, you know, you can,
Speaker 3: like it's important to acknowledge, like we don't have a
Speaker 3: lot of information here, so you know, it's you can't
Speaker 3: really say what this is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, more information is required.
Speaker 3: Oh and I forgot to mention this until now. But
Speaker 3: also there was an article I found where the divers
Speaker 3: from Ocean X did release some photos allegedly of the objects,
Speaker 3: so not sonar, but like camera photographs allegedly taken of
Speaker 3: the object on a dive. But you can't really see
Speaker 3: what you're looking at rob I've shared a link to
Speaker 3: a CBC article with you here that includes one of
Speaker 3: these photos. And yeah, it just looks like a rock.
Speaker 3: It's like a like a kind of blurry piece of
Speaker 3: rock with like the glare of a flashlight shining off
Speaker 3: of it. So it's not really it doesn't really add
Speaker 3: any information as far as I can tell.
Speaker 1: Hmmm, yeah, I you know, I CBC does great work,
Speaker 1: and I have no reason to doubt that this is
Speaker 1: an actual underwater picture. Yet at the same time, the
Speaker 1: closer I look at it that I get more of
Speaker 1: a feel that this is like skin Like this really
Speaker 1: feels like I feel like I see the crease between
Speaker 1: like thigh and groin taken in a like maybe underwater.
Speaker 1: I don't know, is that a pimple I see? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean just it just speaks to the ambiguity of
Speaker 1: the shot, like it's what is it? It's kind of
Speaker 1: whatever you want it to be.
Speaker 3: In fact, one paragraph in the CBC rite up of
Speaker 3: these photos says, quote the new photos released Friday lacked
Speaker 3: perspective and were apparently taken during the Ocean Explorer team's
Speaker 3: most recent dive.
Speaker 1: Okay, well there you go. Just another piece of evidence
Speaker 1: that could be something but could be absolutely nothing. And
Speaker 1: like again, I just really feel like I'm looking at
Speaker 1: somebody's leg here, Like, isn't it? Is it? I feel
Speaker 1: like I see stretch marks.
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, I know what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Like I'm not just trying to be a you know,
Speaker 1: a geek here and you know, making fun of somebody's
Speaker 1: UFO information, But this really feels fleshy but almost but
Speaker 1: not like like I'm also like, what's the shape of
Speaker 1: this person? But oh my goodness, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well, I see exactly what you're saying. Yeah, it does
Speaker 3: look like stretch marks and skin, but it also looks
Speaker 3: like it could be striations in sandstone, if you're true
Speaker 3: bands and sandstone. I'm not even saying that's what it is,
Speaker 3: because once again, for the millionth time, like it's just
Speaker 3: not clear what it is, not enough information to decide.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, well, we're gonna go ahead and close
Speaker 1: this episode out, but we're gonna we're gonna continue this
Speaker 1: line of thought in the next episode of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind on Thursday. We're gonna get into the
Speaker 1: realm of Egyptology and of course, pseudoscience and pseudo history,
Speaker 1: and look at some other examples where if you take
Speaker 1: something of context, if you take something without proper you know,
Speaker 1: expertise applied to some degree, then yeah, you can. You
Speaker 1: can make various interpretations that speak of ancient high tech
Speaker 1: civilizations and alien involvement and whatever it is you happen
Speaker 1: to look for, or even the Sampo, the Sampo moving
Speaker 1: through time and emerging in ancient Egypt.
Speaker 3: I'm sure I really like that you're cementing that the
Speaker 3: Sampo theory is like a new a new major thread,
Speaker 3: a fringe explanation.
Speaker 1: I think it deserves it to due. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: Sampo's pretty interesting. We could come back. We can come
Speaker 1: back and cover Sampo on both Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind and Weird House Cinema, because there's also a great
Speaker 1: movie about the Sampo.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm gonna have to research this thing.
Speaker 1: There. Actually there's more than one potentially interesting movie about
Speaker 1: the Sampo now that I think about it. Anyway, that'll
Speaker 1: be a tale for another time. So in the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, our Poor Science and Culture episodes
Speaker 1: published on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Monday's we do listener mail.
Speaker 1: On Wednesdays we do a short form Monster Factor Artifact episode,
Speaker 1: and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
Speaker 1: just talk about a weird film on Weird House.
Speaker 3: Cinemam huge thanks to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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