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