[HN Gopher] Chemist Identifies Mystery 'Blobs' Washing Up in New...
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Chemist Identifies Mystery 'Blobs' Washing Up in Newfoundland
Author : mykowebhn
Score : 71 points
Date : 2024-11-15 18:57 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| chaghalibaghali wrote:
| http://archive.today/O92yg
| chaghalibaghali wrote:
| Interestingly something similar (but chemically different)
| happened in Australia recently too:
| https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/bondi-beach-tar-balls-...
| askvictor wrote:
| These turned out to be fatbergs (i.e. sewerage that hadn't
| broken down due to people flushing so-called 'flushable' wipes
| down the toilet)
| tiahura wrote:
| So, butylene rubber, a petroleum-based industrial adhesive.
| Meanwhile, Ottawa thinks it's plant based.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| the article doesn't say it, but this all suggests someone
| probably had a bunch of old crap in a tank and dumped in the
| ocean. Maybe it was a giant ocean liner amount of it. Right?
| Why does no one want to just say that outright?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Mostly because the article is about a chemist focussed on
| identifying WTF it is and less so an expert in
| shipping/unreported damage/clandestine dumping.
| whythre wrote:
| Seems like goofy credentialism. Large amounts of this stuff
| don't just appear; someone put it there. Why do we need an
| expert in 'clandestine dumping' to tell us that?
| akira2501 wrote:
| > expert in 'clandestine dumping'
|
| Do bears clandestinely dump in the woods?
| guerrilla wrote:
| Only when nobody's looking.
| chasil wrote:
| Alternately, shipping containers are regularly lost from
| container ships.
|
| The article doesn't say if this was closer to raw material or
| waste.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| Good point, didn't think about that stuff falls off ships
| pretty commonly.
| labster wrote:
| Nothing to worry about, it's just Elon building Galt's Gulch in
| the middle of the Canadian wilderness.
| mdek wrote:
| This reminds me of a very old video game "Science Sleuths"[1] I
| ran into as a kid, where you had to identify a blob on the beach.
|
| [1] http://www.midnightbeach.com/hs/Sleuths.html
| Terr_ wrote:
| > a spongy interior and range in size from a coin to a dinner
| plate, have been found for miles along Placentia Bay
|
| For a moment I misread that as washing up on Placenta Bay, which
| would have added a whole extra level of odd.
|
| Come to think of it, that blend of unsettling reproductive
| metaphors and coastal desolation would fit in the game Death
| Stranding.
| ikiris wrote:
| You don't want to live on the shores of anywhere named placenta
| bay.
|
| There's guaranteed to be a historical reason for a name that
| out there, and not in a way that's good for property value or
| sunset watching.
| yencabulator wrote:
| Usually it comes from a reasonably common last name
| Placencia, which comes from a town on the border region
| between Spain and France.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Friendly picky correction for several different ways of
| writing it: French: Plaisance
| Occitan: Plasenca Spanish: Plasencia
|
| And some extra trivia: There are a bunch of different
| French towns named Plaisance, some of them near the
| Pyrenees, so probably that where the Plasentia name came
| from, as I saw that it was French and Basque sailors the
| ones that arrived there.
|
| The Spanish city of Plasencia is quite far away from the
| Basque Country, in Extremadura, so probably they weren't
| referring (or remembering) that concrete city.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| Mystery Flesh Pit Beach?
| divbzero wrote:
| On the other side of the world, mystery "balls" washing up in
| Australia appear to have a very different origin:
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-07/what-were-black-balls...
| gcr wrote:
| TL;DR: Rubber. Industrial adhesive. Nobody knows why this is
| there or who is responsible yet.
|
| > I'm quite confident that the sample that I handled was PVA
| butylene rubber," [Dr. Kozak] said in a phone interview,
| describing a mix of synthetic rubber and polyvinyl acetate, known
| as PVA. That polymer, he said, is "the active ingredient in white
| glue -- the kind of white glue you have at home is a very dilute,
| kid-friendly version of this stuff."
|
| > Globs of the white sticky substance, which have a spongy
| interior and range in size from a coin to a dinner plate, have
| been found for miles along Placentia Bay since at least September
|
| > Dr. Kozak said that one of the first things he noticed was that
| the blob had "a kind of petrochemical odor to it, kind of like if
| you walk down the turpentine aisle of your hardware store."
| mapt wrote:
| A number of these sorts of "What is this" posts on Reddit about
| mysterious yellowish blobs, end up being polyurethane expanding
| foam.
|
| They float, and their default state is "mysterious blob", the
| only action necessary to create this is to puncture the aerosol
| container. Most people who use them end up throwing away an
| aerosol container that's still half full, but which has
| hardened at the dispenser tip.
| bjamesking wrote:
| I live in rural Newfoundland. There was a Newfoundland post on
| 4chan /pol/ today and now this. Not something I see very often.
|
| We have some very unusual community names. Come by chance,
| Goobies, Cow Head, Grannies Hole, Blow me Down, Spread Eagle, and
| of course the famous Dildo.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Didn't hit the jackpot this time, keep trying. The stuff they are
| chasing is more valuable than gold.
| Loughla wrote:
| Wait, what are they chasing?
| scbenet wrote:
| Can't read the article due to paywall, but potentially
| ambergris? It's a form of whale excrement that washes up on
| the shore and can sell for ~$10k USD/pound
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambergris
| jvan wrote:
| I had hoped from the headline that it would shed some light on
| the Oakville blobs[0], but no such luck. The images don't look
| remotely the same material.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakville,_Washington#Oakville_...
| crazydoggers wrote:
| Those sound like "Star Jelly"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_jelly
| runjake wrote:
| It's probably PVA rubber. They don't know where it came from.
|
| http://archive.today/K1FXn
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