• The verdict is in on that sea monster video: It's a jellyfish

    Experts say the "Cascade Creature" is a jellyfish that's been turned inside-out.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News




    Marine biologists say the spooky "Cascade Creature" seen drifting through the deep sea in a viral video isn't a whale placenta, a parachute, a plastic bag or an alien visitor: It's a type of jellyfish known as a Deepstaria enigmatica.

    The video, which was apparently captured by a remotely operated vehicle near an underwater drilling site, caused a bit of a stir over the past couple of weeks among weird-science fans. Now it looks as if the truth is out there, thanks to assessments from experts such as Steven Haddock at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and Craig McClain at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center.

    "This bag-like jelly is not that rare, but is large, so rarely seen intact," Haddock and his colleagues write on the JellyWatch Facebook page. "In the video, the swirling from the sub makes the medusa appear to undulate, and it even turns inside-out." They provide a helpful picture of a more typical specimen.

    McClain is even more helpful in his posting at Deep Sea News. He provides citations on previous sightings of the beast, including explanations for the jellyfish's weirdly collapsed shape. And he shows through photographs and drawings that the strange appendage and whitish lumps seen in the video are D. enigmatica's gonads. TMI, Craig ... TMI.

    For a third opinion, look no further than Australia's Nine News, which quotes Daniel Bucher, a marine biologist at Southern Cross University, as saying that the gonads were the giveaway.

    Now that we've settled that, bring on the next sea monster.

    More sea monsters:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Robotic jellyfish gets more realistic

    By John Roach, Contributing Writer, NBC News

    A robot designed to look and swim like a jellyfish has gotten even more realistic, according to a researcher working on the motion component of the machine. 

    The robot, known as Robojelly, was developed for the Office of Naval Research in 2009 to spy on ships and submarines, detect chemical spills, and monitor the whereabouts of migrating fish.

    They did this by putting little wires, called bio-inspired shape memory alloy composites, that, when heated, contract just as a muscle does.  

    The original Robojelly, however, didn't swim as gracefully as the jellyfish it was built to mimic, according to Alex Villanueva, a graduate student at Virginia Tech.

    "It was just pulsing and staying in place, it wasn't really going anywhere," he told me. 

    He improved the robot's swimming prowess by studying how jellyfish swim and then re-engineered the robotic propulsion mechanism to more realistically mimic the jellies.

    Natural jellyfish generate thrust by deforming and contracting the bell section of their bodies. The lower, or lagging section of the bell, deforms slightly later than the rest of the bell.

    Villanueva added this so-called flexible margin to the Robojelly.

    "As soon as we put it on, the robot started swimming really well, so well that the biologists were like, 'man, this looks really close to the natural fish,'" he said.

    Villanueva presented the results at the 2011 meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics Nov. 22 in Boston, Mass.

    He is now working on improving the hydrodynamics of the robot so that it swims as proficiently and energy efficiently as the natural fish.

    In addition, he is working on a 5-foot diameter jellyfish modeled after the lion's mane jellyfish. Results on that robot are forthcoming, but he says it has passed preliminary swimming tests. 

    Great. As if real giant jellyfish weren't scary enough, it now appears we have to contend with look-like giant robotic jellyfish.

    More on underwater robots:

     

    John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.

     

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