Vast bed of metal balls found in deep sea

originally posted by: stirling
There ya go.............ALIENS!

Nope. Alien poop droppings - heavy element

a reply to: Vasa Croe
Sorry to pour cold water on this but the existence of nodules on the sea floor has been known about for years. The problem is getting at them in a cost effective manner.

Why are they round ? Probably the same reason a pebble beach has rounded pebbles !!!!!

hmmm interesting discovery. does anyone know how are they dated?

ps. i misread the thread title as 'meatballs found in deep sea' and my immediate thought was ' but how would they have survived down there? surely the fish would eat them? ' - the power of suggestion.

originally posted by: yorkshirelad
a reply to: Vasa Croe
Sorry to pour cold water on this but the existence of nodules on the sea floor has been known about for years.

So, it's a load of ballocks?

originally posted by: RoScoLaz4

hmmm interesting discovery. does anyone know how are they dated?

Ask them very nicely. It may help if you dress up like a big metal ball first, a bit of small talk, find out where they like to go for dinner.

originally posted by: yorkshirelad
a reply to: Vasa Croe
Sorry to pour cold water on this but the existence of nodules on the sea floor has been known about for years. The problem is getting at them in a cost effective manner.

Why are they round ? Probably the same reason a pebble beach has rounded pebbles !!!!!

Yeah....they have been around for a long time, but if you had read the article, you would have seen that even the scientists that found these think they are abnormal as they have never seen round ones. And at 18K feet below the surface, it is a bit different from pebbles on a beach that are constantly tumbled and in motion from tides/waves.

These have apparently sat very dormant in their existing position for, from the article, up to 10 million years.

So....sorry to pour cold water back on your post, but maybe read the article prior to posting.....what you said was already known and stated IN the article.

Scattered along the seafloor, dense clusters of large metal lumps have been discovered by scientists trolling for deep-sea creatures between South America and Africa

Is "trolling" correct or should it be "trawling"?

I got an image of scientist hooking up a loudspeaker to a deepsea sub and blasting comments like
"what sort of pathetic aquatic creature would live in this crappy place" or "You know you guys are total bottom feeders dont ya?"

originally posted by: Vasa Croe

originally posted by: theabsolutetruth
a reply to: Vasa Croe

I read about those the other day, they are rather fascinating, probably some perfectly normal cause though odd that they are more spherical than normal.

There must be all sorts of bizarre formations, creatures and things miles under the sea.

Yeah....the spherical nature of these being different than the others normally found is what I am interested in as well.

I would wonder if it has something to do with depth at which these have been found, and if it is significantly deeper than where the others are typically found. Maybe something to do with pressure at that depth or temperature or something. Kind of like diamonds....the more pressure the better the diamond.

Honestly... there's nothing unusual about this "find".

Manganese nodules

originally posted by: Blarneystoner

originally posted by: Vasa Croe

originally posted by: theabsolutetruth
a reply to: Vasa Croe

I read about those the other day, they are rather fascinating, probably some perfectly normal cause though odd that they are more spherical than normal.

There must be all sorts of bizarre formations, creatures and things miles under the sea.

Yeah....the spherical nature of these being different than the others normally found is what I am interested in as well.

I would wonder if it has something to do with depth at which these have been found, and if it is significantly deeper than where the others are typically found. Maybe something to do with pressure at that depth or temperature or something. Kind of like diamonds....the more pressure the better the diamond.

Honestly... there's nothing unusual about this "find".

Manganese nodules

Well....as I posted earlier, the scientists from the article seem to disagree....

"These were very, very circular, which is strange," Devey said. "They usually look like cow flops."

Unless Devey's "strange" and your "unusual" have vastly different meanings I guess.....

originally posted by: Bedlam Ask them very nicely. It may help if you dress up like a big metal ball first, a bit of small talk, find out where they like to go for dinner.

ha ha i though that might happen

originally posted by: Bedlam

originally posted by: yorkshirelad
a reply to: Vasa Croe
Sorry to pour cold water on this but the existence of nodules on the sea floor has been known about for years.

So, it's a load of ballocks?

originally posted by: RoScoLaz4

hmmm interesting discovery. does anyone know how are they dated?

Ask them very nicely. It may help if you dress up like a big metal ball first, a bit of small talk, find out where they like to go for dinner.

Ha! They are very sensitive to comments about age though, so avoid that at all costs.

SO ,with clams you get pearls ,with C'THULU you get those.

a reply to: Vasa Croe

Well... I guess that's why I don't understand why the "Chief Scientist" thinks it's "strange"

From the article:

In the 1970s, manganese nodules captured the interest of researchers as a possible source of rare metals such as nickel, copper and cobalt, which are also mixed in with the manganese in the strange seafloor deposits.

By definition... nodules are circular or spherical....

I think the media is over-hyping this story.... as it often does...

originally posted by: cavtrooper7
SO ,with clams you get pearls ,with C'THULU you get those.

Maybe it's Cthulu pellets, eh?

In his city of R'lyeh, dead Cthulu waits...pooping?

a reply to: Bedlam

YOU WANNA JINX MANKIND?
Geeze...

originally posted by: CraftBuilder

Look he got...

Balls of Steel. /insert Duke Nukem voiceover here.

a reply to: Elementalist

Mankind is not 10 million years old.

a reply to: butcherguy

500 million tonnes is a lot of metal.

If we reduce that by more than half it could be geologically dangerous...

could the be cannon balls?

a reply to: Bedlam

Star Trek "The Devil In The Dark"en.wikipedia.org...