Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. And hey, we're back to
Speaker 3: anomalous imagery. In the previous episode of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: Your Mind, we were looking at some photographs that people
Speaker 3: have wanted to sort into the proof of Aliens Confirmed column,
Speaker 3: and we ended up talking about reasons why that's not
Speaker 3: necessarily a wise or well informed move, and we thought
Speaker 3: we might come back to talk about more images of
Speaker 3: this sort. And you know what, here we.
Speaker 2: Are, Yeah, in the last episode, And this is this
Speaker 2: is a situation where it's probably helpful if you listen
Speaker 2: to that last episode, but it's not necessarily a part
Speaker 2: one in part two. So I don't know what you
Speaker 2: do what you will regarding these episodes. But in the
Speaker 2: last episode, we discussed the so called El Tannan antenna,
Speaker 2: a deep sea photograph of something taken in nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: four that ultimately led to a positive identification of a
Speaker 2: specific species of deep sea sponge, but also fed a
Speaker 2: great deal of paranormal and ufology speculation about alien technology
Speaker 2: and global energy grids and the like. We discussed how
Speaker 2: images and data like this that dwell in a kind
Speaker 2: of low res realm of evidence often play into arguments
Speaker 2: for supernatural or other worldly explanations instead of mundane natural
Speaker 2: 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 your 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 2: Yeah. And as we discussed in the last episode, and
Speaker 2: we'll continue to discuss here, to whatever extent, you can
Speaker 2: also cut out the context for the image, or ignore
Speaker 2: the context and or ignore the expertise in a given
Speaker 2: field that could be vital to understanding what you're looking
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, And it's not necessarily a situation either where someone
Speaker 2: is like willfully, I refuse to listen to the experts
Speaker 2: because because you know, I know what I see, you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes it's maybe a little more nuanced than that. So
Speaker 2: I do want to acknowledge that, But just throwing that
Speaker 2: out there as well. We'll come back to the idea
Speaker 2: as we roll farward.
Speaker 3: Now. Another one of the ideas we talked about in
Speaker 3: the last episode was how popular it seems underwater images
Speaker 3: in particular are in the UFO, slash UAP and general
Speaker 3: fringe explanation idea space. Of course, the Eltannan object was
Speaker 3: an underwater photo, and I mentioned in the last episode
Speaker 3: the idea that apparently anomalous underwater images are especially useful
Speaker 3: nucleation points for these types of narratives because they're sort
Speaker 3: of inherently low resolution or low information. The details are
Speaker 3: often obscured. Images of things underwater often look weird, but
Speaker 3: you can't tell exactly what they are, which means you
Speaker 3: can start making up whatever I explanation you find the
Speaker 3: most exciting. And I was thinking about how underwater imagery
Speaker 3: often qualifies as low information evidence in multiple dimensions at once,
Speaker 3: so like the original image is usually grainy and indistinct
Speaker 3: if it's taken in visible light, Like if it's a
Speaker 3: photograph taken invisible light, light conditions are usually low, and
Speaker 3: sometimes there is, you know, something obscuring the image in
Speaker 3: the water. Maybe the water is cloudy, maybe not. Sometimes
Speaker 3: the image is not even based on visible light. Maybe
Speaker 3: we're looking at a sonar image or something like that,
Speaker 3: which further complicates your ability to identify what it is
Speaker 3: you're looking at. And sometimes things are even obscured in
Speaker 3: other ways, like partially buried or have things on top
Speaker 3: of them. Beyond all this, objects and formations that may
Speaker 3: be common underwater do not seem common to people who
Speaker 3: spend their lives on land and on the surface. Think
Speaker 3: of the sponge we talked about last time. If you
Speaker 3: lived on the ocean floor, you'd probably recognize that. You
Speaker 3: would be like a tree. You know, you've seen lots
Speaker 3: of these before, but not living on the ocean floor.
Speaker 3: That's that's totally weird. You've never seen anything like it.
Speaker 3: You have no idea what it could be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as we touched on in that one, the so
Speaker 2: called antenna occurred as a singular object without any fellow
Speaker 2: antenna around it. In this one photograph, but previous dredges
Speaker 2: in the deep ocean had revealed places where they seem
Speaker 2: to 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: it seemed 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 other 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 like a really famous and valuable
Speaker 3: thing and you've you know, published coordinates of exactly where
Speaker 3: it is, there's like huge interest in it. Maybe, but
Speaker 3: like for the most part, if you're talking about something
Speaker 3: on the bottom of the ocean, whatever imagery you release
Speaker 3: of it, that you initially produce, it's that you know
Speaker 3: that that's going to be all there is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because I mean, ultimately, whether your idea is
Speaker 2: based in just pure scientific inquiry or if it's based
Speaker 2: in some sort of paranormal interest or some sort of
Speaker 2: fringe theory, you're still going to have to somehow get
Speaker 2: that funding together to pay for an expedition to an
Speaker 2: extreme environment. And you know, are the numbers going to
Speaker 2: 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 2: Exactly. Yes, because, as we touched on in the first episode,
Speaker 2: you know, these images become kind of articles of faith
Speaker 2: within a given belief system, within a given worldview. And yeah,
Speaker 2: you go down there, there's you've got to admit, okay,
Speaker 2: you know, lining up with your hopes and dreams, maybe
Speaker 2: you'll get that high res image of this thing and
Speaker 2: it will literally change the way we think about ourselves
Speaker 2: and we think about the world. But what are the
Speaker 2: chances that you'll just it'll be that face on Mars scenario,
Speaker 2: you know where oh well, you realize that once you
Speaker 2: have some different imagery, some different information to go on,
Speaker 2: the face is not there at all, and then how
Speaker 2: 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 2: Sure? Yeah, I found this way probably I think a
Speaker 2: lot of people find it is that you find these
Speaker 2: various lists of strange, unexplained things beneath the ocean, and
Speaker 2: they're generally they're generally a weird array of objects and
Speaker 2: alleged objects, some of which are verified realities, some are blurry,
Speaker 2: low res images. But yeah. This sonar image was taken
Speaker 2: by Swedish Ocean X on the floor of the Northern
Speaker 2: Baltic Sea at the center of the Gulf of Bothnia
Speaker 2: in June twenty eleven during a hunt for I believe
Speaker 2: possible sunken treasure. So they were on the lookout with
Speaker 2: their imagery for you know, things that might be ships,
Speaker 2: things that might be man made objects on the bottom. Now,
Speaker 2: the image that came out of all of this, the
Speaker 2: sonar image, has captured the imagination of ufologists because it
Speaker 2: does look roundish and many illustrations, and I want to
Speaker 2: stress that illustrations based on this imagery readily, and these
Speaker 2: will readily come up and search for you. Don't worry.
Speaker 2: You don't have to look hard for them. In fact,
Speaker 2: it's harder to sort of wean them out and just
Speaker 2: focus on the sonar data they lean into. This kind
Speaker 2: of interpretation of this roundish object is perhaps a millennium
Speaker 2: falcon s spaceship, or perhaps something akin to the ship
Speaker 2: that the engineers have in the Alien franchise.
Speaker 3: I was thinking something that, yeah, from Prometheus. It looks
Speaker 3: like that technology style.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is an iconic derelict spaceship that has mysteries
Speaker 2: aboard that we absolutely should on Earth. We actually absolutely
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeahual image here is definitely in the low information zone,
Speaker 2: and various critics have pointed this out as a reason
Speaker 2: that not much can be made out of it, aside
Speaker 2: from the consensus that we're almost certainly looking at a
Speaker 2: geologic formation here and not a spaceship, not part of
Speaker 2: a lost city on the bottom of the ocean, some
Speaker 2: part of a lot of civilization. Their whole articles speculating
Speaker 2: that as well, And you know, it's worth driving home
Speaker 2: like these ideas, just as pure ideas are very exciting,
Speaker 2: Like who wouldn't want to learn more about a possible
Speaker 2: alien spaceship on the bottom of the ocean. Who would
Speaker 2: want to hear more about a lost city that was
Speaker 2: Atlantis style that was swallowed up by the waves in
Speaker 2: ancient times. But more likely than anything, this is just
Speaker 2: geology down there, and if you're into geology, it's pretty exciting.
Speaker 2: But I guess we have to sort of look at
Speaker 2: the at the end of the day, perhaps geology doesn't
Speaker 2: have necessary as much of an excitement value in the
Speaker 2: mainstream or certainly in the in the fringe. So if
Speaker 2: you're if you're given two possibilities, even though one is
Speaker 2: far more likely, some people are just going to go
Speaker 2: for the the sexier answer, And of course the answer
Speaker 2: that confirms or seems to confirm some ideas and aspirations
Speaker 2: one has for.
Speaker 3: The universe interpretations I've come across in addition to saying
Speaker 3: this is an alien spacecraft. Oh and by the way,
Speaker 3: I should say, early articles about this from around the
Speaker 3: time it was first released often like would draw outlines
Speaker 3: around parts of this sonar image, like asking you to
Speaker 3: lean into certain shape interpretations, And one of the outlines
Speaker 3: that was often drawn was essentially the millennium falcon. So
Speaker 3: there there's a weird kind of space where they can
Speaker 3: almost like if you're a journalist doing an article and
Speaker 3: drawing an outline like that, you can be like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's just funny. You know, it's a funny joke. But
Speaker 3: also you probably know that you are getting some traffic
Speaker 3: from like playing into the hand of UFO interpretations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've also seen somewhere they're like, okay, these are
Speaker 2: stairs and then this is you know, pointing out like
Speaker 2: architectural supposed architectural details on this object. And you know, again,
Speaker 2: you're you're you're a lot of people if they're seeing
Speaker 2: this image for the first time, you're giving them all
Speaker 2: the interpretation and given them the full script for interpreting
Speaker 2: 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 U.
Speaker 3: There are various flavors of secret Nazi interpretations. It's a
Speaker 3: it's a U boat model we've never seen before, some
Speaker 3: kind of underwater Nazi bunker.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, obviously there's a great deal of Nazi
Speaker 2: stuff 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 circular looking texture on the ocean floor that
Speaker 3: has some parallel lines kind of running across it that
Speaker 3: you know, you could well want to interpret 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 2: You know. One of these images you included where it's
Speaker 2: been traced, it looks kind of like I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 2: gonna throw this out there. It looks kind of like
Speaker 2: one of the helmets of the giant warriors from Nasaka,
Speaker 2: the Valley of the Wind, like on its side. So
Speaker 2: perhaps this is a remnant from that time before the
Speaker 2: Seven Days of five.
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: to 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 malfunction, 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.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker 3: I'm a little doubtful of that kind of story.
Speaker 2: You know, given that this is near Finland. I would
Speaker 2: be shocked if no one has suggested that it might
Speaker 2: be the lost Sampo, which of course is this object
Speaker 2: from Finnish mythology that was essentially like it brought riches
Speaker 2: and good fortune and treasures. It was this font of wealth,
Speaker 2: and if memory serves like the myth is that it
Speaker 2: was lost at sea during a battle. So I don't know,
Speaker 2: it sounds like it could be the Sampo. If I'm
Speaker 2: going to lean into mythology for my interpretations, do.
Speaker 3: They say what the Sampo looks like?
Speaker 2: I've seen some illustrations where it is actually kind of
Speaker 2: kind of round. Yeah, but I think maybe smaller. I
Speaker 2: 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 coinde, a shield. So
Speaker 3: why not a giant disk at the bottom of the ocean.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, one of the reasons that people say this must
Speaker 3: be a spaceship or some other piece of out of
Speaker 3: place technology is I think essentially an intuitive reaction to
Speaker 3: certain 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 these
Speaker 3: square tiles or rectangular tiles appearance in this particular sonar
Speaker 3: image the one we've been looking at here. There are
Speaker 3: different versions of it you can find on the internet.
Speaker 3: But even the fact that it appears to be made
Speaker 3: of the rectangular blocks or tiles, I think is actually
Speaker 3: somewhat influenced by the fact that the image has some
Speaker 3: sort of digital artifact lines running parallel from top to
Speaker 3: bottom across the image. And these parallel bars crossing the
Speaker 3: image are not just on the object, but they're covering
Speaker 3: the whole bitmap, and thus they are obviously a byproduct
Speaker 3: of 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
Speaker 3: illustrations this is another case just like we talked about
Speaker 3: last time of what was originally a low resolution or
Speaker 3: low information piece of evidence being subject to mythologizing in
Speaker 3: grandiose elaborations in artworks. So if you Google image search
Speaker 3: this object, results containing the actual sonar image will be
Speaker 3: vastly outnumbered by on fictional illustrations. I've included a few
Speaker 3: for you to look at here, rob folks at home,
Speaker 3: You can look them up yourself, just type in Baltic
Speaker 3: cea anomaly. To be clear, these are not photos of
Speaker 3: the actual object. They are imaginative artworks. All of the
Speaker 3: interesting and provocative sharp detail shown in them is made up.
Speaker 3: But articles and videos about the object seem to use
Speaker 3: things like this. Nonetheless, it's kind of like, look, here's
Speaker 3: one way of imagining what this could look like up close,
Speaker 3: if you could see it sharply. And for some people
Speaker 3: this seems to suggest it's legitimate to assume that's the
Speaker 3: way it actually is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and be clear, this can also take place at
Speaker 2: kind of a subliminal consumer level, where you just you
Speaker 2: pull up a bunch of images of this thing, and yeah,
Speaker 2: most of the ones on your page are going to
Speaker 2: be perhaps leaning into some sort of fantastic illustration, and
Speaker 2: the illustrations are cool, Like you can't help but look
Speaker 2: at this and feel the kind of way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I 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 2: Now I want to throw out another wild speculation. What
Speaker 2: if this is a tetromino or a Tetris block, and really,
Speaker 2: instead of trying to get down there to it, what
Speaker 2: we need to do is construct a tetramino to interlock
Speaker 2: with it and drop it down and make sure that
Speaker 2: we have lined it up appropriately so that it will
Speaker 2: 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 like one
Speaker 3: half of it seems to be a Tetronimo, it's got
Speaker 3: the blocky parts that seem like they could interlock, and
Speaker 3: then the other half is rounded like a Connect four piece.
Speaker 3: So maybe it is for a hybrid type game something
Speaker 3: we haven't seen and yet.
Speaker 2: I mean, this does touch on the rea. It's like
Speaker 2: it's not square enough, It's not it doesn't have enough
Speaker 2: right angles that it really shouts unnatural object as loudly
Speaker 2: as some would perhaps insist that it does. It's also
Speaker 2: not round enough, it doesn't have the end. That would
Speaker 2: not in either case would necessarily mean that it is
Speaker 2: not of this world. But certainly like those are the
Speaker 2: sorts of shapes one would want to see in their spaceship.
Speaker 2: You would want to see a more perfect circle, You
Speaker 2: would want to see a lot of angles that that
Speaker 2: we usually don't think of as occurring naturally in nature.
Speaker 3: We will come back to in a minute commentary on
Speaker 3: the sonar 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 that
Speaker 3: some that looked like it had sort of some blocks
Speaker 3: or some rectangular bricks in it. In the spirit of
Speaker 3: the previous episodes, let's talk about sponges that look like technology.
Speaker 3: I think it's time for let's talk about natural rock
Speaker 3: formations that look like architecture. There are lots of them.
Speaker 3: You can just google lists of things that are natural
Speaker 3: geologic formations that look like things made by humans or
Speaker 3: made by intelligence, maybe alien intelligence. So I wanted to
Speaker 3: just focus on one example, because I thought the images
Speaker 3: were so striking. Let's look at what is called tessellated pavement. Now,
Speaker 3: to be clear, I'm not saying that's what this is
Speaker 3: an image of. I'm just citing this as an example
Speaker 3: of things that are natural geologic formations that totally look
Speaker 3: like they could not be that they must have been
Speaker 3: made by intelligence. Rob, you can have a look at
Speaker 3: the photos I included for you. How would you describe these?
Speaker 2: So one of these images, the one with the sunset
Speaker 2: over it, this is one of my favorite images. I
Speaker 2: used to have this on my computer as was one
Speaker 2: of my desktop wall papers. It's just so splendid to
Speaker 2: look at, and it does. It looks kind of otherworldly.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 2: It has a psychedelic feel to it. It just makes
Speaker 2: you feel nice. A couple of the other images of
Speaker 2: this sort of thing, maybe let feel less surreal, less visionary,
Speaker 2: and more like, oh, this was once a shopping mall
Speaker 2: of some sort. Like clearly some sort of structure was
Speaker 2: built here and it's gone. So I don't know if
Speaker 2: shopping 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 2: Yeah, rectangular tiles, rectangular spaces, and you get this sense
Speaker 2: like if you've ever seen a large building like a
Speaker 2: you know, a storage facility, factory or a mall, and
Speaker 2: it's been torn down, like and the junk has been
Speaker 2: cleared away and you're just left with the with the base,
Speaker 2: it often looks something like this, you know, where you
Speaker 2: can see where rooms used to be, you can see
Speaker 2: bits of tiling, et cetera. So yeah, it it's it
Speaker 2: whispers some sort of human origin when you look at it.
Speaker 2: If you again, if you don't have the proper context
Speaker 2: 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: tesselated pavements. Tesselated as a synonym for tileds, so it
Speaker 3: means the practice of cover 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've 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 cracking 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, you know,
Speaker 3: columns of basalt that have hexagonal shapes. That that's another
Speaker 3: type of strange jointing that doesn't look like that could
Speaker 3: happen in nature, but it does. That's caused by just
Speaker 3: patterns of how certain types of rock cool and then
Speaker 3: crack as they cool. In the case of the tesselated 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 formations. 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 cobblestone or like the top of
Speaker 3: a loaf of bread rising over the pan. The authors
Speaker 3: write that at areas farther away from the contact with
Speaker 3: the water, the pavement spends a longer time drying out
Speaker 3: during low tide, which gives more opportunity for salt crystals
Speaker 3: to form on top of the rock, and these salt
Speaker 3: crystals erode the rock surface, and the erosion happens faster
Speaker 3: inside the pan than it does in the cracks around
Speaker 3: the pan forming the rim, so you end up with
Speaker 3: this depressed pan appearance where it can hold pools of water. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: the loaf formations are closer to the water, there's less
Speaker 3: drying in between tides, less salt crystal, less salt crystallization,
Speaker 3: and more erosion just due to water flowing in the
Speaker 3: cracks in between the rectangles and like sand and abrasion
Speaker 3: eroding those. So you end up getting this raised, puffed
Speaker 3: bread like kind of appearance. Rob. I've got another image
Speaker 3: for you to look at that is more of the
Speaker 3: loaf formation down below here. This is the one in
Speaker 3: black and white, and man, these really really do look
Speaker 3: like human made bricks. But it's a natural formation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, if you just glanced at it,
Speaker 2: even if you I don't know, I guess if you
Speaker 2: looked at it long enough, you might wonder why the
Speaker 2: bricks are not of uniform size. But certainly it smacks
Speaker 2: 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 just like totally looks like something
Speaker 3: that is well known if you happen to know about
Speaker 3: certain things.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: But to come back to the sonar image from the
Speaker 3: Baltic Sea, the Baltic Sea anomaly, 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 Woodshull Oceanographic Institute.
Speaker 3: I think now he's a professor at Northeastern University who
Speaker 3: has a number of research focuses I found, including robotics
Speaker 3: and things in that domain, but also quote imaging in
Speaker 3: visually degraded environments, including underwater and in polar regions.
Speaker 2: 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 onto the other side of the map. He also
Speaker 3: says that the black parallel lines in the image I
Speaker 3: already mentioned these earlier just because I didn't have any expertise,
Speaker 3: but I just noticed that these create the false impression
Speaker 3: that the disc is more made of rectangular blocks than
Speaker 3: it probably actually is. He said that these black parallel
Speaker 3: lines in the image showed that there are places where
Speaker 3: the sonar is dropping out, so that's an image quality problem.
Speaker 3: He also says that the edges of the image have
Speaker 3: lost detail, also showing that the sonar is not calibrated properly.
Speaker 3: This article also consulted someone named Charles Paul, who is
Speaker 3: a scene your scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute,
Speaker 3: who said that even if the sonar image is roughly
Speaker 3: is a roughly accurate picture of what's down there, there's
Speaker 3: no reason to think it's a spaceship. It could be,
Speaker 3: first of all, a roughly circular rock outcropping. No reason
Speaker 3: that's implausible or, he says, quote the result of fluid
Speaker 3: or gas venting. Such venting causes inexplicable and poorly understood
Speaker 3: structures like pock marks circular depressions that Paul has seen
Speaker 3: are all around the world. In one area off California alone,
Speaker 3: he says he has mapped more than fourteen hundred such
Speaker 3: pock marks. So gas venting from the seafloor can cause
Speaker 3: unusual formations. That's something you wouldn't know if you weren't
Speaker 3: familiar with looking at the seafloor. Another possible explanation, which
Speaker 3: I thought was very interesting. Remember how this this thing
Speaker 3: is actually not all that deep. It's only about three
Speaker 3: hundred feet down. And because it's not all that deep,
Speaker 3: Paul says, it could be a pattern created by a
Speaker 3: fishing troll quote. For example, Paul says the jaws or
Speaker 3: opening of a troll could easily have struck the bottom
Speaker 3: elsewhere and dropped a disc like mound of sediment or
Speaker 3: a trail of pebbles that make up the track marks,
Speaker 3: he says. Another option mentioned in this article, Hanu mant Singh,
Speaker 3: even said that the original image could have been produced
Speaker 3: by fish. He describes how the use of side scan
Speaker 3: sonar can produce all sorts of confusing images and often
Speaker 3: has to be double checked by passing back again from
Speaker 3: another angle to really figure out what it was you
Speaker 3: saw on the first pass. Now I wanted to mention
Speaker 3: one more article from twenty twelve that addresses this and
Speaker 3: interviews a irrelevant expert who had access to some materials
Speaker 3: that may have been from the object. This article is
Speaker 3: by the science writer Natalie Wolkover. It's from August thirtieth,
Speaker 3: twenty twelve, called mysterious Baltic Sea object is a glacial deposit.
Speaker 3: So this article was written after the head of this
Speaker 3: or one of the heads of this ocean exc Peter Lindberg,
Speaker 3: 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 seemed to be being kind of ambiguous,
Speaker 3: but saying things like if this is Atlantis, that would
Speaker 3: be amazing.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Apparently the explorers who discovered this sonar image at one
Speaker 3: point gave some rock samples to a researcher in Sweden
Speaker 3: named Vulcar Brukert, who is an associate professor of geology
Speaker 3: at Stockholm University, gave him some rocks for analysis. These rocks,
Speaker 3: I couldn't find a lot about exactly how they were sourced,
Speaker 3: but they allegedly came from the object, so I guess
Speaker 3: they were claiming to have collected them on a dive.
Speaker 3: Brukert was then quoted in a Swedish tabloid in a
Speaker 3: way that ambiguously suggested he might be like, it's kind
Speaker 3: of an ambiguous quote. He says, you know, oh, it's
Speaker 3: surprising to find this black rock here, and the ambiguity
Speaker 3: suggests he might be signing on to the idea that
Speaker 3: this object is actually quite mysterious and unexplainable by science.
Speaker 3: But when other journalists followed up with him, this same
Speaker 3: scholar was not of that opinion at all, that it
Speaker 3: was like a baffling, unexplainable thing. He said that the
Speaker 3: rocks they gave him, whether they came from the object
Speaker 3: or not, were mostly just ordinary seafloor rocks, with one exception,
Speaker 3: which was a piece of basaltic rock, which is made
Speaker 3: out of hardened lava and not normally the kind of
Speaker 3: rock you'd find all over the floor of the Baltic Sea.
Speaker 3: But it's still not all that baffling because rocks get
Speaker 3: moved around, and in this case, it's very likely this
Speaker 3: kind of rock could have been left at the bottom
Speaker 3: of the Baltic Sea by a glacier, Brookert says in
Speaker 3: a statement given for this article.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: Because the whole northern Baltic region is so heavily influenced
Speaker 3: by glacial thawing processes, both the feature and the rock
Speaker 3: samples are likely to have formed in connection with glacial
Speaker 3: and post glacial processes. He wrote, Possibly these rocks were
Speaker 3: transported there by glaciers. So this is another fascinating thing
Speaker 3: about nature. You know, nature is very weird. Glaciers can
Speaker 3: get rocks stuck in them. They pick up a rock
Speaker 3: from one place, carry that rock to another place as
Speaker 3: the glaciers move. Then when the glacier melts, it drops
Speaker 3: the rock, and this leaves behind rocks that are called
Speaker 3: glacial erratics, rocks that are out of place because a
Speaker 3: glacier carried them to the place where they now rest.
Speaker 2: Now, this is obviously a slow process compared to the
Speaker 2: imagined fast process of alien spaceship settling down on the
Speaker 2: 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 guess is that it's some sort of rock formation
Speaker 3: left over by the freezing and thawing of glaciers from
Speaker 3: the last glacial maximum, from the last peak of the
Speaker 3: ice age. So I don't think I would sort this
Speaker 3: one exactly like the Eltannan antenna, where in that case
Speaker 3: I would say it's, you know, ninety nine point nine
Speaker 3: percent certain, we know exactly what that image is of
Speaker 3: and when 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, and they would lean
Speaker 3: heavily on images that appeared to be fake without clarifying
Speaker 3: 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 a 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
Speaker 3: like you know, for example, just drawing the spaceship outline
Speaker 3: around it. It's kind of like, hey, you know, maybe
Speaker 3: think about it as a spaceship, or saying that it
Speaker 3: might be constructed as if, you know, by an ancient
Speaker 3: civilization or something, and then coming up with a story
Speaker 3: about 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
Speaker 3: know for now. This is it's stuck in that low resolution,
Speaker 3: low information area, and if we if we were to
Speaker 3: get better information on it, I strongly suspect it would
Speaker 3: turn out to be just a kind of interestingly shaped rock.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would turn out to be either an interestingly
Speaker 2: shaped rock or there would be nothing. And in a way,
Speaker 2: that's that's the worst answer, right, because you can always
Speaker 2: just move a goal post on it. You can say, well,
Speaker 2: I guess the ship moved. I guess it was a
Speaker 2: functional spaceship, And so the mystery continues that in a
Speaker 2: way that proves what we thought it was, or Hey,
Speaker 2: if anyone wants to take up my Sampo theory, well,
Speaker 2: clearly some of the major powers of this world saw
Speaker 2: that it was the Sampo, and they went and claimed
Speaker 2: the Sampo, and they are busy getting the Sampo back
Speaker 2: online somewhere to produce, you know, unlimited riches. But in
Speaker 2: either case, you know, it's like, like we've been saying,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's a far simpler exercise to turn to
Speaker 2: explanations for which we have additional data that we can
Speaker 2: We can look at other rock formations and say, yes,
Speaker 2: this is potentially the sort of thing that's happening here.
Speaker 2: We can look at other glacial situations and say, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is potentially the model at work here, and we
Speaker 2: have examples of this model. Whereas when you turn to UFOs,
Speaker 2: when you turn to the law City of Atlantis or
Speaker 2: the Sampo, you know, these are not things for which
Speaker 2: we have any additional reputable data to really throw in
Speaker 2: 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 the other thing again is just like when you're
Speaker 3: 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, you can't really
Speaker 3: say what this is.
Speaker 2: 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 can add a rob I've shared a link
Speaker 3: to a CBC article with you here that includes one
Speaker 3: of these photos. And yeah, it just looks like a rock.
Speaker 3: It's just like a like a kind of blurry piece
Speaker 3: of rock with like the glare of a flashlight shining
Speaker 3: off of it. So it's not really it doesn't really
Speaker 3: add any information as far as I can tell.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, yeah, I you know, CBC does great work, and
Speaker 2: I have no reason to doubt that this is an
Speaker 2: actual underwater picture yet at the same time, the closer
Speaker 2: I look at it that I get more of a
Speaker 2: feel that this is like skin Like this really feels
Speaker 2: like I feel like I see the crease between like
Speaker 2: thigh and groin taken in a like maybe underwater. I
Speaker 2: don't know, is that a pimple I see? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean just it just speaks to the ambiguity of
Speaker 2: the shot, like it's what is it? It's kind of
Speaker 2: whatever you want it to be.
Speaker 3: In fact, one paragraph in the CBC write up of
Speaker 3: these photos says, quote, the new photo was released a
Speaker 3: lacked perspective and we're apparently taken during the Ocean Explorer
Speaker 3: team's most recent dive.
Speaker 2: Okay, well there you go, just another piece of evidence
Speaker 2: that could be something but could be absolutely nothing. And
Speaker 2: like again, I just really feel like I'm looking at
Speaker 2: somebody's leg here, like isn't it is it? I feel
Speaker 2: like I see stretch marks? You know. Yeah, I know
Speaker 2: what you're saying, Like I'm not just trying to be
Speaker 2: a you know, a geek here and you know, making
Speaker 2: fun of somebody's UFO information, But this really feels fleshy
Speaker 2: but almost but not like one. Like I'm also like,
Speaker 2: what's the shape of this person. But oh my goodness,
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, all right, well, we're gonna go ahead and close
Speaker 2: this episode out, but we're gonna we're gonna continue this
Speaker 2: line of thought in the next episode of Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind on Thursday. We're gonna get into the
Speaker 2: realm of Egyptology and of course pseudoscience and pseudo history,
Speaker 2: and look at some other examples where if you take
Speaker 2: something out of context, if you take something without proper
Speaker 2: expertise applied to some degree, then yeah you can. You
Speaker 2: can make various interpretations that speak of ancient high tech
Speaker 2: civilizations and alien involvement and whatever it is you happen
Speaker 2: to look for, or even the Sampo, the Sampo moving
Speaker 2: 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: of fringe explanation.
Speaker 2: I think it deserves its due. Yeah, and the Sampo's
Speaker 2: pretty interesting. We could come back. We can come back
Speaker 2: and cover Sampo on both Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 2: and Weird House Cinema because there's also a great movie
Speaker 2: about the Sampo.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm gonna have to research this thing there.
Speaker 2: Actually there's more than one potentially interesting movie about the Sampo,
Speaker 2: now that I think about it. Anyway, that'll be a
Speaker 2: tale for another time. So in the meantime, if you
Speaker 2: want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind, our core science and culture episodes published on
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays, we do listener mail, On
Speaker 2: Wednesdays we do a short form Monster Factor Artifact episode,
Speaker 2: and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
Speaker 2: just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If
Speaker 3: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 3: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow Your
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