A mysterious ‘shiny golden egg’ is found at the bottom of the sea – and experts ‘tickled’ it to reveal what’s inside
A ‘GOLDEN egg’ has been found at the bottom of the sea – and although it’s in the hands of scientists, it remains a mystery.
At first glance, it looks like it could be a lump of pyrite under some sea slime.
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But National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) researchers say the shiny object, found two miles deep in the Gulf of Alaska, feels soft, like skin tissue.
“This golden orb, likely an egg shell, struck an imaginative nerve with many watching yesterday,” NOAA said wrote in on X (formerly Twitter).
Researchers also suspected that it could be the remains of a sea sponge.
NOAA researchers found the shiny substance 250 miles off the coast of southern Alaska as part of their 24-day live broadcast Seascape Alaska 5 Expedition.
The goal of the expedition is to capture areas of the ocean that have never been seen by humans before, with some locations being nearly four miles deep.
“Something was trying to get in… or get out,” one researcher said via video.
The extraterrestrial object certainly came as a surprise to researchers who made jokes about the X-Files.
“I just hope nothing comes out when we poke in,” said another scientist.
“It’s like the beginning of a horror movie.”
A remote-controlled arm was used to “tickle” the egg, revealing the skin-like texture of the tissue to the researchers.
It was then sucked into a tube for testing in a lab.
“If our collective knowledge can’t identify it, then it’s something strange,” concluded one team member.
“What kind of animal would make an egg shell like that?”
With up to two-thirds of deep-sea life believed to be undiscovered, this could be an exciting new discovery for science.
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