A couple of months past, I did an
off the wall post speculating on the plausibility of slime moulds forming
bubbles of methane and then lofting into the stratosphere to reside. Slime moulds certainly have the capacity to
form odd plant like structures and the like so producing a balloon would work
well. Residing in the stratosphere puts
them well above the turbulent part of the atmosphere and assuming the capacity
to adapt to the supposedly harsh conditions there allows it all to work. I thought it a little farfetched, but now we
have this odd item.
This gel needs to be checked to
see if it is slime mould. It makes sense
that a descending balloon creature would recompact itself to allow it to
descend to the Earth and survive.
In fact such gels have most
certainly been observed in the past but never appearing so noteworthy. A small
fallen gel in the grass would naturally be assumed rightly to be a local event. For all we know it has been raining gel balls
forever without any particular notice.
Hopefully someone will put these
under a microscope to confirm that they are slime moulds.
In the meantime my of the wall
conjecture drawn by the apparent life vacuum in the stratosphere is beginning
to grow conforming evidence not least because I know that I should be looking.
27 January 2012 Last updated at 11:15 ET
The blue spheres are jelly-like but have no smell and are not sticky
A man in Dorset has been left
mystified after tiny blue spheres fell from the sky into his garden.
Steve Hornsby from Bournemouth said
the 3cm diameter balls came raining down late on Thursday afternoon during a
hail storm.
He found about a dozen of the balls in his garden. He said:
"[They're] difficult to pick up, I had to get a spoon and flick them into
a jam jar."
The Met Office said the jelly-like substance was "not
meteorological".
Mr Hornsby, a former aircraft engineer, said: "The sky went a
really dark yellow colour.
"As I walked outside to go to the garage there was an instant hail
storm for a few seconds and I thought, 'what's that in the grass'?"
'No smell'
Mr Hornsby said he was keeping the balls in his fridge while he tried
to find out what they were
Walking around his garden he found many more blue spheres were
scattered across the grass.
He said: "The have an exterior shell with a softer inner but have
no smell, aren't sticky and do not melt."
Mr Hornsby said he was keeping the balls in his fridge while he tried
to find out what they were.
Josie Pegg, an applied science research assistant at Bournemouth
University, speculated that the apparently strange phenomena might be
"marine invertebrate eggs".
"These have been implicated in previous 'strange goo'
incidents," she said. "I'd have thought it's a little early for
spawning but I suppose we've had a very mild winter.
"The transmission of eggs on birds' feet is well documented and I
guess if a bird was caught out in a storm this could be the cause."
0 comments:
Post a Comment