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Sci-Fi Idle

Underwater Sonar Robot Discovers A Real Loch Ness Monster (Prop) (discovery.com) 62

Posted by EditorDavid from the doing-a-science dept.
A Norwegian oil company is finally performing a sonar scan on the bottom of Loch Ness, creating a high-resolution map of the Scottish lake that's reputed to contain a mysterious lake monster. "Operation Groundtruth" will be using a marine robot named Munin, and they've already identified a 27-foot-long shipwreck and disproved rumors of a 27-foot-long "Nessie trench" where the cryptid creature could be hiding. The Scottish tourism agency has issued a press release about the robot's discovery of a life-sized model of the Loch Ness monster used in a 1970 film, which had sunk during the filming more than 45 years ago. "The agency's statement said 'Nessie found'," reports Discovery News, "with an asterisk at the bottom reading 'replica model'."
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Underwater Sonar Robot Discovers A Real Loch Ness Monster (Prop) More

Underwater Sonar Robot Discovers A Real Loch Ness Monster (Prop)

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  • Ping (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Quick! Call CNN! This could be the MH370!

  • Nessie (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Sunday April 17, 2016 @10:07AM (#51926715) Homepage

    Apart from the obvious all-encompassing bollocks that is Nessie (including destroying quite a nice loch with crap tourism shite):

    This kind of calls in question all the viability, and highlights the pointlessness, of all the previous "Nessie searches" that didn't even find a 45-foot prop that we knew roughly where it was.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Alomex ( 148003 )

      destroying quite a nice loch with crap tourism shite

      Destroying? Not that there's any hyperbole there or anything.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ledow ( 319597 )

        Go there in the summer, at the height of tourist season.

        I'm not talking physical damage (it's a loch), I'm talking making a place you wouldn't want to be in longer than it takes to start the car and fight through the traffic to get out of there.

        • Try going down the East side.

          I do know what you mean. Once, courtesy of a bike tyre that was shedding rubber all over the place, I had to cycle from Fort Augustus to the bike shop in Inverness in August. Absolute fucking nightmare. But, to be honest, I blame the fucking car-dwelling grockles, not the relatively small amount of Nessie-ism.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jiro ( 131519 )

      The prop stays on the bottom of the ocean and doesn't move around. Unless you're specifically searching the bottom of the ocean, you wouldn't have any reason to find it when looking for living monsters.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Knuckles ( 8964 )

        The prop stays on the bottom of the ocean and doesn't move around. Unless you're specifically searching the bottom of the ocean, you wouldn't have any reason to find it when looking for living monsters.

        It's not an ocean.

        • NO but it is as deep as a shallow one, with the max death around 750' and it sits only 50' above ocean level.

          There are a few lakes in the world that are deep like that, what they suffer form is the tools needed to explore the depths are too big for the boats that can fit on those lakes.

          this has only changed in recent years.

    • The world has many, many large lakes. But few have claims of a monster, and none are so famous as Nessie. It's a local industry, like all the shops around Roswell selling plastic aliens.

    • Interestingly, it's been decades since serious cryptozoologists dismissed Nessie on the basis that the loch's turbid waters didn't allow for enough photosynthesis to sustain a sufficient biomass to feed a large species. Their most prominent theory besides hoaxes is that maybe some visiting seals have been magnified by optic phenomena akin to a fata morgana.

    • Re:Nessie (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mccalli ( 323026 ) on Sunday April 17, 2016 @04:46PM (#51928201) Homepage
      Massively disagree with 'destroying'. I've taken the family to the Nessie museum twice, a few years apart, and both times I was impressed by the attitude there. They go to great pains to show that Nessie isn't any of the things normally attributed to it (not a plesiosaur because the landmass is in the wrong place for the time of the plesiosaurs, not a large whale or similar, not a large mammal at all because of unusually low fish density due to the waters being clogged with peat etc., etc.), and they also show all the fakes and take you through how it was done.

      They don't really come out on the side of Nessie existing at all in fact. I think that's an excellent attitude for such a museum to have, and I was impressed both times. The monster is treated as a bit of fun, and nothing else.

  • Cameras Everywhere (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The fact that almost everyone is walking around with a camera these days means that if Nessie is real there should be an increase in new pictures of her roughly equivalent to the increased proportion of camera-hours (the number of hours that people with cameras or mounted video cameras are watching) around Loch Ness. I don't keep up on cryptozoology news, but a quick search didn't indicate any headlines to that effect. So it's likely Nessie doesn't exist (or has died I suppose).

    This same logic applies to

    • Re: Cameras Everywhere (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Nessie was never sighted before the first photo of it. And later relatives of the photographer admitted that it was a hoax. So the only reason why we even consider the existence of nessie is a hoax.

      • Nessie was never sighted before the first photo of it.

        Asshole (I'm not necessarily addressing you per se but rather that orrice which you appear to be forming words with), if youd done the slightest bit of research on the topic you're mouthing - I mean assholing - off about, you'd know that there've been sightings reported for centuries, including two opposing armies that put down their weapons to behold the fucking spectacle...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dave420 ( 699308 )

          And you'd realise that the claims you put so much trust in are dubious to say the least. We get it - you really want Nessie to exist - just don't attack people for being rational because they shine a cold, hard light on your pet belief.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 )

      This same logic applies to Big Foot,

      what gets me is these Bigfoot hunters have lots of drama in their videos but ***none*** of those guys have what I would say definite video (all those shows are high drama and like reality shows they are a total turnoff for me). I'd only be convinced if they have the discipline to spend months (years) out in wilderness to get wild animal shots. i.e. the Snow Leopard, Empire Penguin, and that camel like animal in middle Gobi desert where camera crew lugged all kinds of equipment in addition to food and water

      • Getting back to Nessie (which I don't think exists), there is the Open ROV underwater drones http://www.openrov.com/ [openrov.com] [openrov.com] that don't cost that much so maybe we can get lots more "eyeballs" looking what really is down in that water.

        Since I've probably spent more hours swimming in Loch Ness than you (or indeed, almost anyone else in this thread), I happen to know that the water is pretty murky. As in, you'd be lucky to see your own feet if you were treading water. While it may be less murky deeper do

    • there should be an increase in new pictures of her roughly equivalent to the increased proportion of camera-hours (the number of hours that people with cameras or mounted video cameras are watching) around Loch Ness.

      If, indeed, they're camera-hours looking at the loch. most of the grockles are taking photos of each other, not of the loch itself. And people are generally not very good at observing things that they're not expecting (which is the big hole at the centre of the "many eyes" hypothesis of code rev

  • Ye cannae have a 'replica model' of something that (probably) does not exist.

    • Ye cannae have a 'replica model' of something that (probably) does not exist.

      Damnit, don't get all "facty" and everything!!

      • Sorry. I was in a foul mood and wanted to get into an argument with the internet. Happy cruising.

        • Sorry. I was in a foul mood and wanted to get into an argument with the internet.

          Well, in that case, YOU'RE WRONG!! (I hope that helped a little bit.)

          • What, call that an argument! That is just contradiction - the automatic gain-saying of what the other person said. Don't worry. On another reply I have already been called a pedant. Hoping to get him to compare me to the Nazis next.
          • Awww, come on. Be a bit more subtle with setting up the Python skits. Even I could see that coming.

            • Awww, come on. Be a bit more subtle with setting up the Python skits. Even I could see that coming.

              No you couldn't!

              • Awww, come on. Be a bit more subtle with setting up the Python skits. Even I could see that coming.

                No you couldn't!

                [SELF] Nails feet to perch. Fish is not happy.

    • Sure you can. Replica "Star Wars" everything. Replica "Star Trek" everything.

      Reality is quite overrated.

      • Star Wars and Star Trek actually exist. That is, there really are objects like light sabres and space ship models that were made to be used in the movies. In some cases you can buy the original objects or they exist in collections. Mostly though we would be buying replicas of those objects since they are more abundant and less expensive. Now if there was a computer model used only for CGI and never physically produced, you could still consider a model of it to be a replica because it is made based on th

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tom229 ( 1640685 )
      Considering that nessie is supposed to be a plesiosaurs, of which we have skeletal evidence, you certainly could create a replica that would satisfy your pedantic definition.
      • You can suppose whatever you like about something for which there is no actual evidence. In any case that makes the prop a replica model of a plesiosaur - of which I agree there is ample evidence.

  • Rabbits freeze when they see motion. Why not a sea monster?

    Chances are Nessie ate the model years ago and that it's now able to assume its form.

  • But do they have a device to detect the obvious inter-dimensional portal that Nessie swims through to avoid being found?

  • ...they've already identified a 27-foot-long shipwreck and disproved rumors of a 27-foot-long "Nessie trench" where the cryptid creature could be hiding...

    Did they check underneath the 27-foot-long shipwreck to see if the 27-foot-long Nessie trench (and Nessie) was underneath? Ha! I didn't think so! It can't be a coincidence.

  • (It's only a model)

  • It's a boat wreck ... and a small one at that.

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