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Mystery Of The Eltanin Antenna

We'll just have to file this one under "dunno" :D
 
Sponging Aliens

But wait a minute - what if the Space Aliens are....SPONGES?

And protective of less-developed specimins of their kind?

Oh! Oh! I've got one held hostage in my bathroom right now.

Towering grey masses at my windows! They're going to br
 
No, I think that's it. Damn. Boring.


The End
 
darrg said:
Sounds like OldTimeRadio has gone to Dimension X :)

I wouldn't half mind. DIMENSION X was a GREAT American radio SF drama anthology of the early 1950s.
 
In 1964, the ship photographed an unusual object at a depth of 13,500 feet. At the time, there was no submarine that could have carried a piece of technology to this depth.

In 1960, a manned bathyscape reached the bottom of the Challenger deep, 35,813 feet.

Whilst a bathyscaphe is not a "submarine" in the normal sense of the word, it is nevertheless a manned, free diving, self propelled and dirigible vessel.

4 years before the structure was discovered, people had made controlled descents to 2.65 times the depth that the structure was found at.

Bathyscaphes have windows. It is easy to think of a number of possible arrangements of hooks, arms magnets and the like that could be used to position a structure.

The bathyscaphe works on the basis of a buoyant an incompressible float filled with gasoline or some similar oil, offset by ballast that can be dropped when required. Alternatively, instead of dropping ballast, you can let the gasoline out and let water into the float. An "underwater balloon" made on the same principle could have been used to lower the structure in a controlled way, guided by a bathyscaphe.

Putting the structure there before 1964 would have been a big undertaking but certainly not impossible.

Why it was put there is another question.

I have learned something today. For nearly 50 years, I have thought it was bathyscape, not bathyscaphe.
 
In 1960, a manned bathyscape reached the bottom of the Challenger deep, 35,813 feet.

Whilst a bathyscaphe is not a "submarine" in the normal sense of the word, it is nevertheless a manned, free diving, self propelled and dirigible vessel.

4 years before the structure was discovered, people had made controlled descents to 2.65 times the depth that the structure was found at.

Bathyscaphes have windows. It is easy to think of a number of possible arrangements of hooks, arms magnets and the like that could be used to position a structure.

The bathyscaphe works on the basis of a buoyant an incompressible float filled with gasoline or some similar oil, offset by ballast that can be dropped when required. Alternatively, instead of dropping ballast, you can let the gasoline out and let water into the float. An "underwater balloon" made on the same principle could have been used to lower the structure in a controlled way, guided by a bathyscaphe.

Putting the structure there before 1964 would have been a big undertaking but certainly not impossible.

Why it was put there is another question.

I have learned something today. For nearly 50 years, I have thought it was bathyscape, not bathyscaphe.
I thought they had decided it was a sponge
 
Quite inadvertently, never having heard of this story previously, I came across the following on YouTube and wondered if perhaps still of interest:


From the helpful link above:

220px-Cladorhiza_concrescens_Agassiz_illustration.png


Chondrocladia concrescens

maximus otter
 
I thought they had decided it was a sponge

Hi, yes, that seems to be the case.

However, I was trying to get at the point that the opening paragraph of the article quoted in the original post starts with an assertion that is demonstrably untrue, and which is easily checkable.

It is common for Fortean reports to start with a bold assertion that goes unchallenged and therefore creates an artificial mystery.

If it had been a structure, then asking "how did it get there if there were no submarines that could get that deep?" would be misleading.

If we unthinkingly accept the premiss that no known submarines (or similar craft) could get to that depth, it opens the door to hypotheses such as (a) a top secret submarine that substantially outperforms every other known submarine, or (b) aliens or (c) an ancient technologically advanced civilisation.

In this case, the article went on to explore some ideas broadly of that ilk.

So basically I was calling out BS in the article that started the thread.
 
... If we unthinkingly accept the premiss that no known submarines (or similar craft) could get to that depth, it opens the door to hypotheses such as (a) a top secret submarine that substantially outperforms every other known submarine, or (b) aliens or (c) an ancient technologically advanced civilisation. ...

Agreed ... The statement at face value, and if taken to refer to military submarines per se, was accurate. However ...

There were in fact two independently maneuverable manned submersibles owned and operated by the US Navy prior to the August 1964 photo being taken that would have had no problem accessing the seabed at the circa 3900 m depth at which the mystery 'antenna' lay:

- Trieste
- Alvin-1
 
USNS Eltanin didn't carry any manned submersibles or bathysphere. Its specimen and sample collection capabilities consisted of trawling and dropping winched devices (e.g., seabed core samplers; remote control camera).

The 'antenna' photograph was taken on Eltanin's Cruise #14.

Much more information on USNS Eltanin and its service history in Antarctic waters can be accessed in this NSF document:

USNS Eltanin: Four Years of Research
K. G. SANDVED
Office of Antarctic Programs National Science Foundation
http://s3.amazonaws.com/Antarctica/AJUS/AJUSvIn4/AJUSvIn4p164.pdf
 
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