Pharyngula

Posted by: Kristin C | November 25, 2008 7:51 AM

I've seen the clip before, and I do NOT get tired of it. That is a weird-ass creature.

Posted by: Chris Davis | November 25, 2008 8:31 AM

@Ompompanoosuc - if one a' those turned up anywhere near where I was working, I guarantee that my motor coordination would suffer severely.

But - damn - what a beauty! Of such things was 'The Abyss' made.

Posted by: Carpworld | November 25, 2008 8:41 AM

These guys are awesome. Here's some more videos and pics: http://archive.serpentproject.com/view/species/Magnapinna_sp..html

SERPENT project is actually really worth having a dig through if you have a few minutes and like benthic weirdness.

Posted by: Jules | November 25, 2008 9:22 AM

Weird, it's poised like a jellyfish in the water, with the long tentacles dangling below. Except the 'elbows' appear to hold the limbs out further from each other - almost to spread them out and keep them tangling - like the sticks that separate marionette puppet strings.

Posted by: True Bob | November 25, 2008 9:38 AM

Well I, for one, welcome our Elbonian-Tentacular Overlords.

Posted by: Doug Little | November 25, 2008 10:43 AM

Weird, it's poised like a jellyfish in the water, with the long tentacles dangling below. Except the 'elbows' appear to hold the limbs out further from each other - almost to spread them out and keep them tangling - like the sticks that separate marionette puppet strings.

Ain't evolution a wonderful thing. It's got built in outriggers.

Posted by: cosmichorror | November 25, 2008 1:31 PM

All hail Cthulhu!

Posted by: Sili | November 25, 2008 3:43 PM

Still a less shaky image than what I can produse.

Posted by: drdrab | November 26, 2008 1:41 AM

To give you a sense of scale the large pipe sticking up from the sea floor is almost always 30 inch diameter. The drill pipe being pulled out is likely 5 1/2" diameter.
Of course the camera work is shaky, they are using a ROV at 7800ft in a current.

Posted by: Arnosium Upinarum | November 27, 2008 4:45 AM

#7: "I love NASA and space exploration and all, but really, what the hell is down there?"

NASA? WTF??? Dammit, are we mixing apples and asparagus again? Suppose we keep our eye on the friggin' science ball, shall we, and knock off easy-to-recognize insanity-spending (like, say, off the top of my head, that $3/4 trillion on a luxurious super-embassy in Baghdad equipped with everything from swimming pools to tennis courts, and no, it's not officially or commonly added to the cost of that incredibly stupid war, but one of the major factors designed to keep us there). Then, with a fraction of all that, we can explore the Earth's oceans AND other places NOT on the Earth like, for example, what may be lurking beneath the ice crust in a global subterranean ocean within Jupiter's moon Europa that is estimated to be up to 100km deep.

That's a volume of water around TWICE that of the Earth's oceans. Honest, now, wouldn't you like to take a peek? Aren't you the least bit curious what nature may have cooked up elsewhere, independently of what Earth has served up? Why should biologists be earth-life chauvinists? Why not just start being life-chauvinist? Chemically and environmentally, there's nothing "down to earth" that ain't "out there". Copernicus started the nasty idea that has guided science ever since: the heavens do not revolve around us; we are NOT special, remember? It sure guided Darwin's thinking.

Be a stand-up Strong Darwinist: EXPECT life to have evolved elsewhere, as it has here. Why not? Why SHOULDN'T those same physical and chemical laws, provided with the same ingredients and conditions, set forth other fantastic biochemical journeys of evolutionary ramification? The very HEART of Darwin's idea is that given separate trials from identical starting conditions, a completely different outcome will result every time. But we can't even begin to test that idea unless we look elsewhere: the SINGLE outcome and its fragmentary fossil history which we ARE thus far fortunate enough to study is just the result of a SINGLE particular trial. That's the main problem: evolutionary biologists can't perform a study that examines what happens on each of a dozen or 100 earths. They have to conduct relatively extremely tiny examples of such trials. Thousands of them. So far, if I am not much mistaken, every single one of them is consistent with the general heart of the idea of evolution via natural selection.

But just discovering ONE example of the most rudimentary life on any other world would send creationists into a teeth-gnashing frenzy. Looking at these vids encourages one to imagine what marvels of complexity may be lurking within the vast ocean of Europa...imagine discovering something extraordinary, complex, sophisticated: that would freeze creationists into a state of apoplexy.

Mars, Europa (to a lesser extent, because of the relative inaccessibility to their possible subterranean oceans, Ganymede and even Callisto) Titan and even little wet-farting Enceladus are none of them precisely like the Earth, but they are crucially important to biology and an understanding of pre-biotic conditions.

The money to PROPERLY explore ALL of nature - here on earth as well as off of it - has been in super-abundance throughout the space age, or there would be no such thing as wars and bridges to nowhere.

If there's anything that approaches the stupidity of innumerable like examples, it is scientists from different disciplines fighting over table scraps like starving dogs. It's time to end that crap and assert the critical importance of basic scientific research in all fields, and finance it decently, period.

Oh, and #15? With that "eeiyoo" response? That's a form of bigot behavior, yes?