Mystery blobs

Unexpected Elements

BBC

Science

4.4 • 566 Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2024

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

White blobs have been appearing on the beaches in Newfoundland, Canada. They’re kind of doughy-looking, and smell of vegetable oil. As yet, officials are not sure what they could be. Of course, this got the Unexpected Elements team intrigued, so we decided to dedicate the programme to the weird world of blobs, slime and bizarre things that wash up onshore.

We hear about the fabulous hagfish, which produces copious amounts of snot-like slime to defend itself from predators.

But what makes slime so slippery in the first place? And why is ketchup so hard to get out of a bottle? And what makes quicksand so difficult to escape from? It’s all down to fluid dynamics. Professor Daniel Bonn, from the University of Amsterdam, explains the physics behind all these sticky situations.

Also this week, we find out more about a shipment of bath toys that tumbled overboard, and how they have helped scientists to decipher ocean currents.

Plus, we discover more about the restoration of mangrove forests, how flowers can cause weird dreams, the size of the biggest black forest gateau and a species of plankton and how it floats.

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton, with Camilla Mota and Phyllis Mwatee Producer: Emily Knight, with Alice Lipscombe-Southwell, Eliane Glaser and Noa Dowling Sound engineer: Gareth Tyrrell

Transcript

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0:00.0	In 2019, we began investigating the disappearance of Dr. Ruzha Ignatva.
0:08.0	I believe we are a very special network.
0:10.0	A scammer who stole billions from investors around the world.
0:15.0	She's on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list.
0:18.0	And now, we have some unmissable updates. She has money and when you have
0:23.0	money, you have power. Join me, Jamie Bartlett, as the hunt for the missing crypto queen continues.
0:29.5	Listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:33.7	So this week, I saw the movie Inside Out 2, followed by a Q&A with the director.
0:40.8	This is an animation that makes characters of the emotions inside a young girl's brain.
0:46.1	In the first film, those emotions were joy and fear and sadness.
0:49.6	But now our protagonist is a teenager, and there are new characters familiar to anyone who's been through their teens, like anxiety and embarrassment.
1:00.4	When I met Kelsey Mann, the director, I told him that my colleagues described his film as the perfect piece of science communication.
1:08.3	It maps on to what we know of how a sense of self forms. He grinned.
1:13.5	We did a lot of research because we're getting inside the mind. It's important we don't get this wrong.
1:20.9	I feel like that makes him an honorary scientist. I'm Marnie Chesterton from the BBC World Service.
1:27.3	This is unexpected elements.
1:33.8	And I'm joined as ever by a global panel of science journalists. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, Camilla
1:42.0	Mota. Welcome, Camilla. Oi, Marni, hello. Thank you. And in Nairobi, Kenya, good to see you again, Phyllis Mwate. Hello, Mani, Hu Jambo. Phyllis, Camilla, I don't know. Have you come across inside out? I have watched the first one, but please, no spoilers, because I haven't seen the recent one. I want to watch it with my
2:02.9	niece and nephew when they close school in November. Camilla, have you seen it? I have. I've seen
2:08.0	the first one. I'm really looking forward to seeing the second. And I had all sort of emotions.
2:12.9	Seeing the first one, cry, laughed. It was the whole thing. Ah, well, get ready for embarrassment.
2:17.7	I want to move us on from kids' movies to something that sounds like a cheesy bee movie.
	...

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