Eltanin Antenna – Wikipedia
Object photographed on the ocean flooring off the coast of South America
59°07′00″S 105°03′00″W / 59.116667°S 105.050000°W
The Eltanin Antenna is an object photographed on the sea floor by the Antarctic oceanographic analysis ship USNS Eltanin in 1964, whereas photographing the ocean backside west of Cape Horn.
Attributable to its common antenna-like construction and upright place on the seafloor at a depth of three,904 metres (12,808 ft), some proponents of fringe and UFO-related theories together with Bruce Cathie have recommended that it may be an extraterrestrial artifact.[1]
Different authorities have recommended that the article photographed by the Eltanin was an uncommon carnivorous sponge, Chondrocladia concrescens (previously Cladorhiza concrescens).
Historical past[edit]
The 1,850-ton displacement vessel Eltanin was initially launched in 1957, and served with the United States Navy as a cargo-carrying icebreaker. In 1962, she was reclassified as an Oceanographic Analysis Ship and have become the world’s first devoted Antarctic research vessel, a job she crammed till 1975.
On 29 August 1964, whereas taking pattern cores and photographing the seabed west of Cape Horn, South America, the Eltanin took the {photograph} reproduced on this article, at place 59°07’S 105°03’W, at a depth of three,904 metres (12,808 ft).
The primary public point out of the weird topic of the {photograph} was a information merchandise which appeared within the New Zealand Herald on 5 December 1964, beneath the heading “Puzzle Image From Sea Mattress”. In 1968, creator Brad Steiger wrote an article for Saga Magazine, wherein he claimed that the Eltanin had photographed “an astonishing piece of equipment… very very similar to the cross between a TV antenna and a telemetry antenna”.
Identification as sponge[edit]
In 1971 the article was recognized as Cladorhiza concrescens, a species of carnivorous sponge by Bruce C. Heezen and Charles D. Hollister of their e book The Face of the Deep. The e book reproduces the {photograph} taken by the USNS Eltanin in addition to a redrawn model of a drawing by Alexander Agassiz which initially appeared in his 1888 Three Cruises of the Blake. Hollister and Heezen describe Cladorhiza concrescens as a sponge which “considerably resembles a space-age microwave antenna”,[2] whereas Agassiz described the sponges as having “an extended stem ending in ramifying roots, sunk deeply into the mud. The stem has nodes with 4 to 6 club-like appendages. They evidently cowl like bushes in depth tracts of the underside.”[3]
The identification was largely unknown exterior marine biology circles till 2003, when a dialogue of the Eltanin Antenna on a UFO mailing checklist triggered researcher Tom DeMary to contact A. F. Amos, an oceanographer who had been aboard the USNS Eltanin within the Sixties. Amos referred DeMary to the Hezeen and Hollister e book for additional data, after which DeMary printed scans of the sponge drawings on-line.
References[edit]
Additional studying[edit]
- Gage, John G.; Tyler, Paul A. (1993). Deep-sea biology: a pure historical past of organisms on the deep-sea flooring. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge College Press. ISBN 978-0-521-33665-9.
- Hooper, J.N.A.; van Soest, R.W.M., eds. (2002). Systema Porifera: a information to the classification of Sponges. New York, New York: Kluwer Educational/Plenum Publishers. ISBN 0-306-47260-0.