UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

New Pyramid in Antarctica? Not Quite, Say Geologists — **This Antarctic mountain bears a striking resemblance to a pyramid.**
**Credit: Google Maps**

An Antarctic mountain with a unique, pyramid-like shape is suddenly internet-famous, with countless theorists contemplating its origin. Some are wondering whether an ancient civilization created the rocky, pyramidal structure, and others are pointing toward outer space, speculating about the involvement of aliens.

But Occam's razor — the idea that the simplest explanation is usually the right one — points to a far more mundane cause: Those steep, pyramid-like sides are likely the work of hundreds of millions of years of erosion, experts told Live Science.

"This is just a mountain that looks like a pyramid," Eric Rignot, a professor of Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine, told Live Science in an email. "Pyramid shapes are not impossible — many peaks partially look like pyramids, but they only have one to two faces like that, rarely four." [Photos: The World's Weirdest Geological Formations]

The pyramidal mountain, which doesn't have a formal name, is one of the many peaks that make up Antarctica's Ellsworth Mountains, which were discovered by the American aviator Lincoln Ellsworth during a flight on Nov. 23, 1935, according to a 2007 research paper that was published by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

More specifically, the unnamed mountain — located at 79°58’39.25"S 81°57’32.21"W — is in the southern part of the Ellsworth Mountains in an area called Heritage Range, which is known for its extraordinary fossils, including those of Cambrian-period trilobites from more than 500 million years ago, according to a 1972 USGS report.

The mountain isn't that tall by planetary standards — just 4,150 feet (1,265 meters) — or a little less than one-fifth the height of Denali, the tallest mountain in North America, according to Google Earth. The mountain may not have Denali's height, but its unique pyramidal shape sets it apart, said Mauri Pelto, a professor of environmental science at Nichols College in Dudley, Massachusetts.

Freeze-thaw erosion likely led to its pyramid-like shape, Pelto said. This happens when snow or water fills up cracks within a mountain during the day. When night falls and temperatures drop, the snow freezes and expands, turning into ice. The expanding ice causes the cracks to grow, Pelto said.

This freeze-thaw erosion happens countless times, leading to the creation of larger cracks that can, eventually, cause entire rock sections to break off, he said. These forces likely also shaped other pyramidal mountains, including the Matterhorn in the Alps, he said.

**A pyramid-shaped peak called Matterhorn in the Alps.**
**Credit: Ekaterina Grivet, Shutterstock.com**

Three of the mountain's four sides appear to have eroded at about the same rate. "It suggests, since it came out so evenly, that the rock type is fairly uniform," Pelto said. "You don't have any rock layers that are harder to erode."

In other words, the nameless mountain is likely "all in one rock layer," Pelto said. "It's not a very big mountain, so it's not that surprising."

However, the eastern ridge of the mountain is decidedly the black sheep of the family. Instead of descending downward like the other ridges, that fourth side extends east, rising toward even higher terrain, Pelto said.

"The erosion probably wasn't as uniform [on the eastern side]," he said.

Pelto added that although some news outlets are saying that the mountain is newly discovered, that's very unlikely to be the case. There's a research base for climate scientists to the south of the mountain in an area known as the Patriot Hills.

"You can actually probably see this mountain from up there in the Patriot Hills," Pelto said.

As for the conspiracy theorists who are wondering about the mountain's pyramidal shape, "at least they're thinking about something," he said. "In the end, maybe they'll learn something in the process."

Original article on Live Science.

'Mythical' Sea Blob Finally Spotted a Century After Its Discovery — **A giant larvacean, Bathochordaeus charon, surrounded by its inner "house" (the rounded globular object in the middle of the photo) and it's outer "house (the large yellowish mucus net)**
**Credit: (c) 2013 MBARI**

A mysterious sea blob that looks like a psychedelic Slinky has finally been spotted, more than a century after it was first described.

The translucent, sea-dwelling invertebrate, called Bathochordaeus charon, was identified recently off the coast of Monterey, California, by scientists using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). Though B. charon was first discovered a century ago, no one had managed to confirm its existence in all those years, Rob Sherlock, a scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute who found the creature, told Live Science in an email. [See Photos of the Translucent Sea Blob]

Mysterious sea creature

B. charon belongs to a group of sea creatures known as larvaceans — normally teensy, millimeter-size creatures whose bodies resemble a tadpole's, with a large "head" (actually a trunk) and a tail, Sherlock said.

**A giant larvacean, Bathochordaeus charon, that has discarded its mucus feeding filters and is swimming freely in the open ocean.**
**Credit: (c) 2007 MBARI**

Though the sea is teeming with tiny larvaceans, the larger versions, which can have bodies extending up to 3.9 inches (10 centimeters), are much less common. To eat, the sea blob filters food through its shimmering, parachute-like mucus "house" almost 3.3 feet (1 m) in length. By waving its tail, it stirs the water and pulls particles directly into its house. Large particles get trapped and form a fine dusting of marine "snow" on the house, while the smaller particles pass through, concentrating and then funneling into a feeding tube that goes into the mouth, Sherlock said. (The tiny larvaceans also don mucus homes, but they're smaller.)

If a passing squid or fish crashes through the house, or big particles clog the feeding tube, larvaceans simply move on and build another house. Without their houses, they cannot eat, Sherlock said.

First sightings

The first report of B. charon's existence came in 1899, when professor Carl Chun of Leipzig University came across one in the south Atlantic Ocean while leading the Valdivia Expedition, a German mission aimed at exploring the deep sea. Chun believed the creature welled up from the deepest depths of the ocean, so he named the larvacean after Charon, who in Greek mythology ferries the souls of the dead across the river Styx, the researchers reported Aug. 16 in the journal Marine Biodiversity Records.

In the decades that followed, several other naturalists reported spotting giant larvaceans, though only a few were captured alive and described thoroughly. In 1936, for instance, British marine biologist Walter Garstang collected a set of giant larvaceans that differed from Chun's, and they were classified as a new species, Bathochordaeus stygius. [Marine Marvels: Spectacular Photos of Sea Creatures]

Because the two sets of specimens were similar and Chun's originals were lost to history, scientists eventually began to wonder whether Chun's originally described B. charon was actually the same species as B. stygius. One famous larvacean expert even suggested combining the two species names, Sherlock said. Part of the difficulty in capturing these creatures is that they don't fare well in the trawling nets typically used to collect specimens, Sherlock said.

Hiding in plain sight

Sherlock and his colleagues happened upon the new species when the team's ROV, called Doc Ricketts, was exploring the waters of Monterey Bay. As soon as they saw it, the crew carefully collected it in a sealed, thermally insulated container.

"Since the vehicle was recovered some tens of minutes later, the animal was alive, in fantastic shape, and we preserved it right away in order to send it to the Smithsonian," Sherlock said. "We had no idea, until we looked more closely at the specimen, that we had actually found B. charon, the species first described over a hundred years ago."

Genetics and analysis of physical features confirmed the find, Sherlock said. It was official: There really were two distinct species of giant larvacean — B. stygius and B. charon.

"It felt like Chun had finally been vindicated after years of doubt," Sherlock said.

When the team went back over videos from Monterey Bay from the past 25 years, they realized the creature had been spotted many times in the bay. Whether they dwell in places between Monterey Bay and the South Atlantic, however, remains to be seen.

Still, this mythical sea blob is fairly rare; over the course of the past few decades, biologists have seen hundreds of B. stygius, but captured footage of only a dozen B. charon individuals, Sherlock said.

Original article on Live Science.