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Rotating 3D view of Earth's blobs. (Cottaar & Lekic/Geophysical Journal International, 2016) ********************************************************************************************* Earth's interior is not a uniform stack of layers. Deep in its thick middle layer lie two colossal blobs of thermo-chemical material. To this day, scientists still don't know where both of these colossal structures came from or why they have such different heights, but a new set of geodynamic models has landed on a possible answer to the latter mystery. These hidden reservoirs are located on opposite sides of the world, and judging from the deep propagation of seismic waves, the blob under the African continent...

Don't let the blobfish's permanent, miserable scowl fool you: it's actually a pretty harmless creature. Endemic to the deep waters off of mainland Australia, the blobfish is comprised mainly of gelatinous flesh. Due to the low density of its flesh, the innocuous blobfish floats leisurely near the ocean floor, quietly gobbling down small crustaceans and other edible matter that floats into its mouth. According to NOAA, that's about all it can do -- it has very little muscle, so actively hunting prey is nearly impossible. The shocking little creature grows to be approximately a foot long. Because they live at...

Hot blobs of magma - the searing liquid rock beneath the Earth's crust - can spread slow-moving ripples that soar hundreds of meters high across the Earth's surface, a new study suggests. This phenomenon, which works on geologic time scales, may explain relatively rapid pre-historical changes in sea level that occurred without the typical waxing and waning of the polar ice sheets, which hold and release water on scales of thousands and millions of years. This unexplained sea level rise is one of geology's oldest mysteries. During the Paleogene era (65 million to 23 million years ago), the land under...

SAN DIEGO -- Strange objects in faraway space known to astronomers only as Giant Galactic Blobs have, upon close inspection, become a lot weirder. The blobs are huge clouds of glowing gas. They've been puzzling astronomers since their discovery five years ago. Researchers discussed new observations of the object here today at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which works like night-vision goggles to detect infrared radiation, peeked inside the blobs to reveal galaxies lurking within. Turns out there are typically two or more galaxies inside a given blob. Take Blob B6, for example (yes,...

Physicists have created blobs of gaseous plasma that can grow, replicate and communicate - fulfilling most of the traditional requirements for biological cells. Without inherited material they cannot be described as alive, but the researchers believe these curious spheres may offer a radical new explanation for how life began. Most biologists think living cells arose out of a complex and lengthy evolution of chemicals that took millions of years, beginning with simple molecules through amino acids, primitive proteins and finally forming an organised structure. But if Mircea Sanduloviciu and his colleagues at Cuza University in Romania are right, the theory...

(CBS) The black blobs that have mysteriously shown up on the streets and sidewalks of Camden, New Jersey were at least partially explained Friday. State and county officials said the stuff is paraffin wax and poses no risk, but they won't venture a guess as to how it got to the Waterfront South neighborhood. Paraffin wax is used in industrial processes and for making candles. Camden County Health Department spokeswoman Lorraine Hynes said hot weather probably made the goo more noticeable, melting dabs of it into dark, waxy, half-dollar-sized splotches in an area with industrial facilities and homes. Solving the...