%Imagine searching the the #bluedepths of the ocean for some #biological novelty from a time before time and meeting the #flyingspaghettimonster.% - http://clapway.com/2015/08/16/flying-spaghetti-monster-099/

Imagine boating along in the ocean, searching through the blue depths for some biological novelty from a time before time and running into a brain-shaped creature, with what appear to be tentacles, arm-like appendages, just floating along, aimlessly, eternally. You’d probably feel like you were in the beginning of a horror flick and begin Getting the Hell Out. That’s exactly what happened to BP crews as they were doing some research off the coast of Angola when they discovered a flying spaghetti monster lurking in the water along side them. Well, almost.

REAL-LIFE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER

BP company divers were working off the Angola coast collecting video footage of the deep sea. They were around 4,000 feet below the surface with a remotely operated underwater vehicle when they came across this scary looking creature. Not knowing what it was, they BP divers dubbed it a “Flying Spaghetti Monster” due to its long tentacle-looking appendages. Terrified and not knowing what this creature was, the divers videotaped it, hoping to later identify what this creature might actually be.

WHAT IS A FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER?

While you might picture a plate of spaghetti with wings, flying around all willy-nilly, that’s not quite what this thing turned out to be. According to researchers at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, England, this “flying spaghetti monster” is what is known as a siphonophore, specifically a Bathyphysa conifer. This particular type of B. conifer belongs to the suborder Cystonectae, the World Register of Marine Species tells us.
Siphonophores are a class of marine animals that belongs to the phylum Cnidaria, and you might recognize some of the other animals in this classification, such as corals and jellyfish. According to the Christian Science Monitor, this spaghetti-like creature is made up of various multicellular organisms known as zooids. In an interview with Live Science, doctoral student of ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown University, Catriona Munro, tells us that it is rare to see these creatures in their natural habitat.

Earth: The Final Frontier

Scientists have discovered several new species of animals in the last few years, many of which were new forms of marine life, just like the “flying spaghetti monster.” According to the Smithsonian Magazine, more than 100 were just discovered in the Philippines. Dive researchers discovered 40 new types of Nudibranch, and the skeleton of a new kind of heart urchin. It is likely that we will continue to discover various new species of diverse life here on Earth, and it’s exciting to imagine what else could be out there!

BEFORE HAILING CAPTAINS NEMO & AHAB, THINK OVER THE WEEK:

Evidence of the “Flying Spaghetti Monster”

Supermassive Black Hole Is Living Oxymoron - http://clapway.com/2015/08/12/super-massive-black-hole-099/

As it stands today, the universe is brimming with phenomena we’ve never seen before. Some of them reveal mind-boggling contradictions in our own presumed understanding of the cosmos. Recently, researchers at the University of Michigan found such a cosmic paradox.

BLACK HOLE, COLORFUL PROMISES

The smallest supermassive black hole ever detected was just catalogued by astronomers. At the center of a dwarf disk galaxy known as RGG 118, the odd hole in the cosmos is 340 million light years away from Earth, and will likely help us understand how black holes evolve in conjunction with their host galaxies since first joining the universe over 13 billion years ago.

“Black holes come in several different varieties,” wrote The Christian Science Monitor’s Noelle Swan. “The smallest kind, called a primordial black hole, is the size of a single atom, but it contains the mass of a large mountain. The most widely understood black holes are known as stellar black holes and can contain 20 times the mass of the sun within a ball of space with a diameter of about 10 miles.”

BLACK HOLE RGG 118 IN CONTEXT

However, Ms. Swan reminds us that a supermassive black hole can be big enough to swallow our entire solar system whole. So, despite this latest black hole being relatively small, its cosmic portent is certainly nonetheless maximal. Astronomers estimate RGG 118 to be roughly 50,000 times the mass of our own Sun. This is still 100 times less massive than the supermassive black hole lying at the center of our Milky Way, and 200,000 times smaller than the largest black hole yet catalogued, reported the .

This little devil might make big epistemic waves for the astronomical community.

HOW DO BLACK HOLES FORM WITH THEIR HOST GALAXY?

“These little galaxies can serve as analogues to galaxies in the earlier universe,” remarked Vivienne Baldassare, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and co-author of the study, in a recent press release.

“For galaxies like our Milky Way, we don’t know what it was like in its youth,” continued Baldassare, “[b]y studying how galaxies like this one are growing and feeding their black holes and how the two are influencing each other, we could gain a better understanding of how galaxies were forming in the early universe.”

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Supermassive Black Hole Is Living Oxymoron