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Wonder of Science

A spectacular sight 1225m (4019 ft) beneath the waves off Baja California as E/V Nautilus encounters the amazing Halitrephes maasi jelly.

Full video: youtube.com/watch?v=9D0eyl7-XQ

#ocean #nature #science

144 comments
taz

@wonderofscience Delightfully fancy! But we need a banana for scale!

Sheria Robinson-Lane

@wonderofscience it's so interesting how the same patterns in nature repeat themselves. I'm torn if this reminds me more of an eyeball or a sunflower.

Drifter Carbon

@wonderofscience That is as breathtaking as the environment it lives in. Absolutely stellar.

Katma

@wonderofscience
I could watch this all day.
Plus, I just got to hear my spouse say β€œis that polychromatic bioluminescence?” which I’m now going to figure out how to work into another conversation sometime this weekend.
He’s a political sociologist, so I know this probably isn’t a technical term. πŸ™‚
Gorgeous

Katma

@wonderofscience spouse got interested, looked it up, and now thinks correct term is β€œpolychromatic photoluminescence” because light came from an external source. Thoughts?

LetsTalkAboutThat

@wonderofscience jellyfish look like what I’d imagine if eyes would evolve into without a face. Stunning and terrifying lol.

MorganLeFay

@wonderofscience wow, just wow. Looks like a science fiction creature.

RobinSMessing

@wonderofscience

But seriously, that is spectacular. Thans for posting this.

Mindy Conway

@wonderofscience

Nothing the human mind can conceive of will ever capture the beauty of #nature

Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart

@wonderofscience Going to Mars is cool science but we are forgetting the beauty and richness of our world.

Thanks for sharing!

Earth To Ria

@wonderofscience I am legit terrified and amazed at the beauty of this jellyfish.

Timothy

@wonderofscience That dam jellyfish makes me feel completely insignificant.

@Lee_in_Iowa

@wonderofscience This here is the reason I don’t swim in the ocean. I want a nice swimming pool where I can see what’s in the water. (But yes, it’s gorgeous.)

Jon C

@wonderofscience That particular clip makes it look like CGI more than anything else... Deep sea lighting is remarkably simple and modern CGI can easily reach realism that good... It fooled me or a minute.

Jon C

@wonderofscience Clarification: I meant I got fooled into thinking this was CGI.

DELETED

This looks like it's out of FFIX, some weird cross between Kuja and the Invincible.

EverMama8

@wonderofscience I could watch that for hours. Thanks for sharing!

Tara Windflyer

@wonderofscience I LOVE seeing the beauty of ocean life and learning about this spectacular underwater realm.

Dawn Adill Pickle

@wonderofscience living art. Wonder how much more there is down there that we know nothing about?

Lamont

@wonderofscience so let’s just say u got stung by this, how bad would it be? The more mesmerizing, the more pain?

smtddr

@wonderofscience Someone is going make an expensive luxury dress with this design.

xangoh

@wonderofscience that's not a creature, it's an interdimensional portal

Ricki Tarr

@wonderofscience I legit just thought this was a picture of fireworks at first! Magnificent!

Daniel Pavey

@wonderofscience Incredible ❀️❀️❀️

fishsqueezer

@wonderofscience This is gorgeous! I also wonder if, for critters beyond the reach of any oceanic current, this propwash is the most chaotic thing that has ever happened to them. It's got to be, right? It's like being caught in an underwater tornado. I'm not being critical, I'm sure it's fine; I'm just curious.

Valerie

@wonderofscience Holy cow, this is cool! It looks so alien!

Dawn Robertson

@wonderofscience - amazing & wonderful - why is it everything is designed in a circular pattern on earth or under the sea?

Mother Bones

@wonderofscience Looks like living neon!! What could be more cyberpunk.

Bryan Wright

@wonderofscience
What the Eye of Sauron would look like if LOTR were set underwater.

Luna Corbden

@wonderofscience It blew my mind when I learned that this is just one stage of the jellyfish's life, and its many other forms look nothing like this. All that talk about insect life stages in school made me feel so smart as a kid but I felt betrayed for not being taught this until my 30s.

An image showing the life stages of the jellyfish going around in a circle with arrows connecting. They include an adult medusa that looks like what we think of as a jellyfish, a wide dome with tendrils falling out. Then, starting at an egg, planula (round fuzzy thing), another one stuck to the ocean floor which is a knobby thing, polyp which is a tendril growth from the ocean floor, next stage is like that only more fancy, then it detaches to an "immature medusa" which is a simple-looking form of the adult, and round again.
Canticler

@wonderofscience @DemocracyMatters when I dream of spaceships to take me and explore the wonders of the cosmos, I will dream of what you posted here.

ThePdog

@wonderofscience That is an amazing video. How large is the jellyfish?

Wonder of Science

@thepdog Apparently they are quite smallβ€”growing to about 10cm.

ThePdog

@wonderofscience Thanks, hard to get a size perspective from the video.

chadbriggs

@wonderofscience beautiful post. The sea is full of beauty. Thank you for sharing.

JudeBP

@wonderofscience beautiful & so soothing to watch jellyfish.

Alfred KjΓΈlstad

@wonderofscience
It's simply very beautiful indeed πŸ˜‰πŸ‘β™₯️⚘️πŸͺΌ

Tod Kurt (todbot)

@wonderofscience This is clearly a Tau Cetian warp-capable scout vessel

Charlie

@wonderofscience Thank you so much for posting the youtube link .. this delights my eyes and I watched it in wonderment!

Webjunkie

@wonderofscience How is that even real? It’s amazing! Who needs #Pandora ?

πŸŽ‰βšœοΈβšœοΈ Kat βšœοΈβšœοΈπŸŽ‰

@wonderofscience Beautiful! After gazing at its beauty for a while, it made me think this would be one of the looks for Billy Porter if he were a Jelly. πŸ’œπŸ–€πŸ’œ

TruRN

@wonderofscience as a small child in late 59s, I got caught in a riptide on an old air mattress, no life jacket. I was unable to swim and fell off. Above me in the water was this beautiful vibrating star that I reached for the center. I wound up in the hospital for a week, and to this day jellyfish frighten me to death.

Buttery MailsπŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦

@wonderofscience This is such a beautiful and amazing world we live in, and yet we do our best on a daily basis to screw it up.

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