Alaskan Blob Is an Algae Bloom 130
Bryan Gividen writes "Time.com is running a story on the previously unidentified blob floating off of the coast of Alaska. The article states that the blob is an algae bloom — far less sinister (or exciting) than any The Thing or The Blob comparison that was jokingly made. From the article: '"It's sort of like a swimming pool that hasn't been cleaned in a while." The blob, Konar said, is a microalgae made up of 'billions and billions of individuals.'"
Re:Great. Now let's find out ... (Score:5, Informative)
Warmer water leads to . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Like a previous commenter said, yes, when they die they'll take some of their incorporated carbon down to the sea floor. Along the way, microbes are going to be decomposing it. They use oxygen to do that. If there's enough algae (and this sounds like there is) what that means is that all the fish and everything else that needs oxygen dies in that whole zone. It's like the dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico.
This is major Not Good.
Re:Billions and billions... (Score:2, Informative)
Wikipedia points out:
From Cosmos and his frequent appearances on The Tonight Show, Sagan became associated with the catch phrase "billions and billions". As Sagan himself stated, he never actually used the phrase in the Cosmos series.[18] The closest that he ever came was in the book Cosmos, where he talked of "billions upon billions":[19]
A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars -- billions upon billions of stars.
-- Carl Sagan, Cosmos, chapter 1, page 3[20]
However, his frequent use of the word billions, and distinctive delivery emphasizing the "b" (which he did intentionally, in place of more cumbersome alternatives such as "billions with a 'b'", in order to distinguish the word from "millions" in viewers' minds[18]), made him a favorite target of comic performers including Johnny Carson, Gary Kroeger, Mike Myers,[21] Bronson Pinchot, Harry Shearer, and others. Frank Zappa satirized the line in the song Be In My Video, noting as well 'atomic light.' Sagan took this all in good humor, and his final book was entitled Billions and Billions which opened with a tongue-in-cheek discussion of this catch phrase, observing that Carson himself was an amateur astronomer and that Carson's comic caricature often included real science.[18]
I read an interview with him once where he was asked about it, and he responded that it makes him kind of frustrated, since the phrase is nonsensical. There's no change in order of magnitude, so there's no point in tacking on the extra "and billions."
Re:Great. Now let's find out ... (Score:3, Informative)
In my area we feed algae to the talapia and other exotic, food fish. There are lots of good fresh water fish that love gobbling up weeds an algae.