Dead Humpback Whale Found in Amazon Jungle Baffles Scientists
Scientists are baffled by the discovery of a 26-foot-long humpback whale in the middle of the Amazon jungle, on Marajó Island in northern Brazil. The 10-ton male calf was found some 50 feet from the ocean shore, lying in the middle of a tropical mangrove where it will decompose as experts have no way of reaching it with heavy machinery.
The juvenile whale was estimated to be about a year old and is believed to have been separated from its mother during a migration, before washing up on shore in a storm. But how it landed in the middle of the thick jungle growth that far inland is still a bit of a mystery.
Scientists’ only guess is that a storm may have somehow flung the creature into the forest, though the details don’t quite add up. The animal’s carcass is relatively unscathed, and researchers are unable to reach it with bulldozers. So, how did a storm toss this behemoth of an animal that far, or push it into the jungle without leaving a clear path of destruction?
Renata Emin, project leader at the Bicho D’agua Institute, told Brazilian news publication O Liberal, “We’re still not sure how it landed here, but we’re guessing that the creature was floating close to the shore and the tide, which has been pretty considerable over the past few days, picked it up and threw it inland, into the mangrove.”
Adding to the mystery is the fact that humpback whales are almost never seen in this particular region at this time of year. According to Emin, it’s common to see them on the country’s southern coast from August through November, but rarely do they travel the hundreds of miles north to the mouth of the Amazon in February. Something strange certainly caused the not-so-little guy to get lost.
Scientists were alerted to the animal’s presence when they noticed flocking birds of prey scavenging on its carcass. And because of the animal’s peculiar and confined location they will allow it to decompose before eventually removing the bones to be displayed at a local museum.
In the past there have been bizarre meteorological phenomena that cause fish and other animals to rain from the sky during intense storms or tornadic waterspouts, though animals as large as whales have never been reported.
And while it’s more likely that a storm led to the animal being violently pushed inland, fans of The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, might instantly harken back to the scene when a sperm whale is suddenly called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet, questioning the point of its existence – and body parts – as it plummets to the ground.
Maybe scientists on the ground in Brazil should also be on the lookout for a shattered bowl of petunias.
For more on the mystery of animals raining from the sky watch Out of the Blue from Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World:
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5G Tech Could Significantly Impair Weather Forecasting Satellites
Concerns over 5G health risks are coming to a head, and while early adopters and tech junkies want it implemented as quickly as possible, a good percentage of the public is wondering why legislation ensuring radiation safety standards from wireless technology are almost nonexistent.
And now there’s even more reason for trepidation toward 5G, namely that it will set back weather forecasting technology by roughly four decades.
At least that’s according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which issued a warning to lawmakers and wireless telecom giants trying to impinge on its satellite radio frequency bandwidth used to monitor our increasingly volatile climate and warn us of impending natural disasters. No big deal.
“The way 5G is being introduced could seriously compromise our ability to forecast major storms,” Tony McNally of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts told the Guardian. “In the end it could make the difference between life and death. We are very concerned about this.”
That’s because the FCC offered the 24-GHz frequency band to wireless carriers earlier this year, the same range (23.6 -24 GHz) in which water vapor signals in the atmosphere are picked up by NOAA’s and other agencies’ weather satellites and microwave sounders. According to estimates, allowing 5G to live on this frequency would result in somewhere between a 30 to 77 percent data loss for NOAA satellites and bring our weather prediction capabilities to the same proficiency it had in 1980.
But that’s not all; similar auctions of other frequency bands used to detect snow, ice and clouds are also being scheduled for sale.
The US Navy even weighed in on the situation, saying that interference with this frequency range “will result in a partial-to-complete loss of remotely sensed water-vapor measurements.”
Of course, there seems to be a relatively simple solution to this problem – stricter regulation, a little bit of forethought, and maybe the patience to consult with experts in the field about the potential dangers of these new technologies before we just let our technocratic overlords run footloose and fancy-free.
Now if anyone calls you a Luddite for being apprehensive toward the rash construction of a sweeping 5G network, you have yet another example to give of just how recklessly Big Wireless and the FCC are acting. This doesn’t mean we can’t have nice things, let’s maybe just consider all the potentially negative outcomes before blindly building them.
For more on the dangers of wireless radiation, check out Resonance: Beings of Frequency:
