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Science

Mystery of Loch Ness Solved? 118

Posted by Hemos from the interesting-approach dept.
ewhac writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that Geologist Luigi Piccardi will present a paper in Edinburgh, Scotland, today which asserts that sightings of the Loch Ness Monster can be explained as surface disturbances caused by seismic tremors. Loch Ness sits on an active fault, and eyewitness sightings of the monster correlate closely with recorded seismic activity. Don't expect the search for Nessie to be called off any time soon, however. (Can anyone out there with a good fluid dynamics model run an earthquake simulation on Loch Ness and see what happens?)" Maybe this makes more sense than the temperature explanation, but anyway you gotta love the fake photos.
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Mystery of Loch Ness Solved? More

Mystery of Loch Ness Solved?

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  • Hmm (Score:1)

    by ttyRazor ( 20815 )
    earthquakes, eh?

  • Or... (Score:1)

    by drdink ( 77 )
    ...maybe the seismic activity just makes the monster, or whatever it is, surface.

  • Another article (Score:5)

    by rleyton ( 14248 ) on Thursday June 28, 2001 @12:03AM (#123659) Homepage
    The BBC [bbc.co.uk] have a good article [bbc.co.uk] on this too.
  • Hmm... earthquakes, eh?


    I can't imagine a better response to this concept!

    Okay, so I don't necessarily buy the Loch Ness thing, but at the same time, I've had the same physics as everyone and I find the idea of that seismic activity produced some of these sightings (given how they were described) just a little bit counterintuitive.

    Isn't there some less exotic "natural explanation" we can come up with?

    But then that's just me.
  • Maybe its the other way around, and it is the monster surfacing that causes the seismic activity :)

  • I assume he's not claiming that the sightings where people actually claim to see Nessie and not just ripples are caused by seismic activity.
  • Loch Ness Monster can be explained as surface disturbances caused by seismic tremors...

    Exceptin' that maybe twas tha Loch Niss monstarrr that caused those seismic tremarrrs, what? We nevar claimed she was a quiet lass, now, did we?

  • Cause and Effect? (Score:4)

    by clickety6 ( 141178 ) on Thursday June 28, 2001 @12:24AM (#123664)
    So there is seismic activity reported whenever the monster is sighted? Obviously the monster is causing seismic upheavals as it stomps round the bottom of the lake. Ain't the guy ever seen a Godzilla movie?

  • Nessie will live on. (Score:3)

    by an ominous cow ward ( 443574 ) on Thursday June 28, 2001 @12:31AM (#123665)
    I don't think the search for Nessie will ever end. For one thing, it's too big of a local cash cow, like Roswell. Each have become tourist attractions and spawned several books and t.v. shows. For another thing, it's just a lot more fun to imagine that a leftover relic from the Mesozoic era managed to survive millions of years undetected. Earthquake and weather balloon explanations aren't quite as ripe for mass consumption.

  • All the news that snoozes (Score:5)

    by unitron ( 5733 ) on Thursday June 28, 2001 @12:34AM (#123666) Homepage Journal
    "It's interesting," chuckled Hrvoje Tkalcic, a graduate student working at the University of California at Berkeley seismology laboratory last night.

    "Hey boss, I can't get ahold of any experts for a quote."
    "Well then just find somebody who's awake."

  • New poll: Your favorite monster (Score:4)

    by smaughster ( 227985 ) on Thursday June 28, 2001 @12:41AM (#123667)
    • King Kong
    • Godzilla
    • Loch Ness
    • Seismic disturbances near Loch Ness
    • Bill Gates
    • CowboyNeal

  • No way! (Score:5)

    by jsse ( 254124 ) on Thursday June 28, 2001 @12:44AM (#123668) Homepage Journal
    Nonsense! They are incurable skeptics! I saw it, I really saw it. Too bad I didn't carry a camera, so I have my friend draw it [wpi.edu] according to my description.

    Scary, isn't it?
    &nbsp_
    /. / &nbsp&nbsp |\/| |\/| |\/| / Run, Bill!

  • Um... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Has it occurred to any of these rocket scientists that the seismic activity might be caused by the monster?

    If you have a big freaking sea monster thrashing around, you're going to have huge-ass standing waves in the lake. Like, duh.

  • Why is it.. (Score:3)

    by RAruler ( 11862 ) on Thursday June 28, 2001 @12:55AM (#123670) Homepage
    That everytime something unexplainable happenings.. UFO's, lights, strange dreams, an NT Server that doesn't crash, and other such paranormal activies happen, theres always some guy that says its seismic. Everytime, but maybe thats just because when you compare a certain recurrance of events, your likely to find a pattern with something. A large creature living in a lake seems unlikely as hell, but stranger things have happened.

    ---
  • while i am a fan of mythical stuff - the lochness monstor "thing" i have always conceived as a hoax primarialy to bring tourists into a dead and boring area of the world. the scenery is nice, but that doesn't cut it for most travellers :)

    secondly, first sightings (apparent) were 50 years ago.. is this beast still alive? dont read anywhere the expected life-span of a lochness monster.. maybe it died :)

  • And from what I read here, he make a lot of noise, euhm tremors, each times he surfaces.
  • theres always some guy that says its seismic

    what else would explain it? an act of god? :) the press needs something to put on the front page :P the more bizzare, the more "cooler" it seems to the readers.. and, the more "distracted" from reality the more likely it'll have some believers. :P

  • Giant Squid Exist (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We know Giant Squid exist but have never actually been able to film or capture a live one. We know dinosaurs existed once on this planet and all the stories about the Cylocanth(sp?). I think the concept of dinosaurs actually having walked the earth at one time is the concept that is causing most of the doubt in people. To find bones is one thing, but to actually acknowledge that these gigantic creatures actively ran around on Earth can be a somewhat disturbing and terrifying thought. Monsters by todays animals standards, there are still things on Earth, like the Giant Squid, that still fit into the "monster" animal category. It's existence isn't too fantastic, just a little bit unsettling.
  • I don't think the search for Nessie will ever end. For one thing, it's too big of a local cash cow, like Roswell. Each have become tourist attractions and spawned several books and t.v. shows. For another thing, it's just a lot more fun to imagine that a leftover relic from the Mesozoic era managed to survive millions of years undetected. Earthquake and weather balloon explanations aren't quite as ripe for mass consumption.
    The only way the legend of Nessie could ever be squashed was if the loch was drained...

    But this scientists explaination seems a tad overstated. Yes, Loch Ness does sit slap-bang on top of the Great Glen Fault - but an earthquake in Scotland means about 1R... Hardly an event that's felt, never mind the frequency of these (non)events.

    Still, it's been a while since the last madcap explanation!

  • It might be for the sake of science, but soon we will have no more myths to tell... nothing to dream about... Is it just me, or our life becomes too boring?

  • Re:loch ness? its been over 50 years! (Score:4)

    by wangi ( 16741 ) on Thursday June 28, 2001 @01:17AM (#123677) Homepage
    first sightings (apparent) were 50 years ago.. is this beast still alive?
    I think you should read-up a bit more... Legend goes back as far as the 7th century (at least) when it was spotted by St. Columba (you know, the guy who brought Christianity to the Scots).

  • Isn't there some less exotic "natural explanation" we can come up with?

    Tsk, tsk. The so called 'Loch Ness' phenomenon is caused by the interaction between neutrinos and drowned haggis.

  • theres always some guy that says its seismic

    what else would explain it? an act of god? :) the press needs something to put on the front page :P the more bizzare, the more "cooler" it seems to the readers.. and, the more "distracted" from reality the more likely it'll have some believers. :P

    My money is on an escaped pet Brazilian Giant Otter.

  • Yes but if it is dead now, we can expect to see it anyday soon belly-up in the surface(smelling like rotting fish?). :-)
    --------

  • What a waste of 25 cents (Score:3)

    by ConsumedByTV ( 243497 ) on Thursday June 28, 2001 @01:24AM (#123681) Homepage
    I bought the paper today for the first time in a while. One look at the papers headline and I needed to see what this once respectible (but very bias) newspaper had on the front page. After reading the article I was pretty pissed. I payed .25 cents for some guys opinion, who really didnt have much to say anyway. Its amazing what papers have sunk to these days. I felt like I was reading a tabloid. This person got published in this paper on very little other then "hey I am a scientist!" but as far as I can tell he is just as crazy as the other kooks.

    I should have given my quarter to a person asking for change.


    The Lottery:
  • There is no Loch Ness monster. Get over it and do something useful with your time.
    This is one of the cool things about living today. We don't have to dedicate 100% of our time to surviving. We have some time that we can use for things that serves no other purpose than amuse us.
    Of course this extra time sometimes produce very strange results, like links starting with g and ending with x, television, you name it. And then of course evil things like Napster(kidding :-))
    So it is ok not to be productive all the time. I have a problem with that, I can't sit and stare at the TV for hours, the least productive thing I can spend my time on, is posting here. I know that I should learn that it is ok to be bored from time to time and just relax, but its so hard to be bored in these xDSL days.
    Anyway to sum it up, all these things that are not useful are often very fun, and we need fun.

    --------
    • I think you should read-up a bit more... Legend goes back as far as the 7th century (at least) when it was spotted by St. Columba (you know, the guy who brought Christianity to the Scots).
    heh :) so.. 1300+ years old? wowser.. this just makes me believe it more, next thing we'll hear is the highlander theme at the loch... "there can be only one!"
  • It does seem that for every crazed fanatic, trying to convince us of space brothers and ancient sunken cities based on the flimsiest of "evidence", there's at least one crazed skeptic, going to any length to explain away everything as sunspots, swamp gas and weather balloons.

    Ah well . . . at least it keeps them busy and off the streets.

  • Hey, if you're not swayed by this (or any other) theory, and figure Nessy's alive and well, you could always join The Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club [lochness.co.uk].

    No, I'm not a member, just stumbled on the link whilst reading around the story.

    You might also remember the cartoon series based around loch ness monsters... The Family-Ness [weavervale.co.uk] - classic stuff. I always liked silly-ness...

  • I'm going to disagree. I'd have to say, the deeper you probe the mysteries of life, the stranger it gets.

    I guarantee you, before Pasteur, no one thought that disease might have been caused by tiny beasties that live in food, air, skin, everywhere. Turns out, he was right. Truth is stranger than fiction.

    Same thing with the cosmos. Look at what we used to think, 7 shells with tiny holes in them rotating around the earth. Now, it's a whole set of galaxies, stellar clusters, black holes, quasars, neutron stars.

    Oh, boy I hope I aint gonna get a YHBT. Anyway. I still think that trying to figure things out only opens more mysteries to the human comprehension. I mean, what good are we if we don't wonder?

  • Och, yew can try taking Nessie from us, Piccardi, but wha' natural explanation can ye offer fer yer wee tower in Pisa? Nothing! Yer architechts're as bad as yer geologists! Now piss off!


    "You know, the golf course is the only place he isn't handicapped."

  • .. UFO's, lights, strange dreams, an NT Server that doesn't crash...

    NT Server crash may be a hoax. No one shows a picture of it, rather I saw lots of people showing pictures of UFO.

    May be people are too shock to take picture at time of crashing.
    &nbsp_
    /. / &nbsp&nbsp |\/| |\/| |\/| / Run, Bill!
  • Maybe he'll also be the one discovering that Bill Gates wife is fake to. Only a product of BG's fertile imagination.
    Or maybe, just maybe, the whole world we live in and people we meet are all fake.
  • so.. 1300+ years old? wowser.. this just makes me believe it more
    Actually I was a bit inaccurate - that was the first written record. Naturally there's been folklore long before that [lochness.co.uk].

  • In a world filled with harsh realities and pain and hurt maybe the myth/mystery of loch ness is a good thing? and beyond that who are the sort of people that spend their whole dis-proving things like this. im wondering that if in her spare time she tries to prove that wile e. coyote would be dead by now. and beyond that these must be some seizmic activites that do things like this? oh well no matter let whatever be. be.

  • please... (Score:3)

    by the_pres ( 313362 ) on Thursday June 28, 2001 @02:07AM (#123692)
    Please, don't try to disprove this theory saying that a sea monster could cause sismic tremors.
    Have you an idea of how much energy is released in even a small quake (the one you don't feel but it's registered only by seismographs)? Either the monster is blowing nukes under that lake, or...

    By the way, I don't think that this is the right explanation for the sightings. People easily see what they desperately want to see. Think of UFO abductions and things like that.

  • I mean, what good are we if we don't wonder?

    Good consumers?

  • Yeah, we all know that this seismic temor theory is as much rubbish as all the other theories. If only this scientist dude had had an secret thistle-whistle (just like Eslbeth and Angus) to use to summon the Nessies, then he wouldn't have needed to waste his research grant.
  • you will be assimilated, I guess... I do hope there's more than consuming in our future... Like cheap tarot readings...

  • Be your own judge.... (Score:5)

    by NTSwerver ( 92128 ) on Thursday June 28, 2001 @02:14AM (#123696) Journal

    Go to the live Nessie-cam [lochness.co.uk] and wait patiently until you witness the Loch Ness Monster/seismic activity for yourself!

    ----------------------------
  • >what else would explain it? an act of god? :)
    root@earth/quake +connect lochness.uk
  • Oh yeah, that and swamp gas.
  • You'll be amazed at the monsters I see after a bottle Scotch!
  • You've got to wonder why they chose to site some of the cameras in spots where a tree obscures about a third of the picture, or it's pointing at land...

    Perhaps the monsters been fiddling.... ;-)

  • From the article:
    He believes the quakes inspired the first stories of the beast among the Picts, the ancient Scottish tribes known for their tattoos and for carved stone images of the monster.

    Either Piccardi or sfgate.com wasn't paying attention some 1600-odd years ago. The Picts were a distinct race to the Scots.

  • actually ... its simple chaos theory (Score:5)

    by jstockdale ( 258118 ) on Thursday June 28, 2001 @03:17AM (#123702) Homepage Journal
    the /. effect caused a server in san francisco to fall over lowering the overall temperature of the room enought to cause the heating system to kick on. naturally, the heating system was hot water driven, and requiring the intake of additional water. this lowered the overall level of a californian lake causing a down-river pond to dry up. the ducks who's habitat included that pond were forced to fly away, creating a turbulence within the wind. this caused a monarch butterfly to flap its wings, thereby causing a tsunami off the coast of japan^H^H^H^H^H scotland which when colliding with the shore produced seismic tremors which converged, forming a standing wave, in the bedrock below loch ness. the kinetic energy of the vibrating surface caused the surface molecules to spontaneously rearragne into a disturbance which when viewed from approximately level, appeared to look remotely like a vague figure resembling a monster.
  • By the way, I don't think that this is the right explanation for the sightings. People easily see what they desperately want to see. Think of UFO abductions and things like that.
    Are you implying that aliens don't exist? We see them on TV everyday.
  • Would you like to stop seeing those monsters? Avoid looking in the mirror.
  • Please. Isn't this getting old? If there really is a monster there, I think it is high time it is allowed to exist in peace.

    Dude999

    Member #1 Coalition for the freedom of possibly real sea creatures.


  • So are the seismic activity an explaination of the Lock Ness Monster or is the Lock Ness Monster an explaination for the seismic activity.
  • Are you really friends with Bill? I know him well!
  • Loch Ness Monster is no more. But there's the sightings of the fat programmers in silicon valley who jump up and down and make the earth shake. I saw it on Discovery Channel.
  • always some guy that says its seismic

    From what I understand, it's the same guy. I forget his name but I see him on the TV shows pushing his seismic theory on everything. IIRC, he's a geologist, and so sees the world through a geologist's eyes.

    My take would be that seismic events caused some of the sightings. Logs and other debris caused some other sightings. Pranks are the root for yet more sightings. There is no one explanation.


  • How about actually finding one living off the coast of Madagascar? Check out the Coelacanth page [dinofish.com].
  • Science is killing poetry.

    --
  • Last summer my gf and I got a bed & breakfast in Perth, Scotland and the host told us about a 100% guarantee on meeting Nessie method:

    Most people go to Loch Ness, drive around for hours, don't see anything, feel sad, go to a local pub and drink a lot of Scottish Whiskey.

    This is not the right way, because Nessie is attracted to whiskey-fumes and when you're in the pub she can't smell them.

    So you should go to the lake of Loch Ness, enter a local pub, drink a lot of Scottish Whiskey, walk to the lake, breath out and watch Nessie coming to you... The more you drink, the better your chances!

  • Whoa. (Score:1)

    by TREE ( 9562 )
    So the Loch Ness monster is big enough that it gets picked up as seismic activity? Wow.
  • OK, so Mr Burns managed, but that wasn't real life. Seriously, IIRC the loch is a saltwater one that's open to the sea (as well as having rivers flowing into it) - that's one hell of a drainage operation.

    Good luck to any tycoons trying this to boost their popularity : )

  • Tsk, tsk. The so called 'Loch Ness' phenomenon is caused by the interaction between neutrinos and drowned haggis.

    Mmm, Haggis. I once had a friend in Scotland tell me that Haggis is a small mountain animal where two legs are shorter than the others from running around the mountains all the time (to which I responded, "You tell all the tourists that, don't you?"). Perhaps Nessie eats the little Haggises that run too close to the water's edge?
    ---

  • Gates (of project Blue Book): It's just swamp gas, no crash here folks. Or the planet Venus. Yeah, Venus, that's it! The glare of Venus made your screen look all washed-out and blue and stuff. Right.

    Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!

  • I have to ask: are the space brothers always getting oppressed by the [deep breath] Pigs...In...Space...?

    Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!

  • I once had a friend in Scotland tell me that Haggis is a small mountain animal where two legs are shorter than the others from running around the mountains all the time

    This is true - otherwise they would lean to one side - and may fall off the mountain. Natural selection and all that jazz.
    The Tatty McNeaps Museum of Natural History, near Glasgow (pron. glAz-gee), which is near Edinburgh (pron. ed-in-BERG), which is near London (pron. London), held a very interesting exhibit on the evolution from the sheep scrotum to the, now domesticated, common haggis. Just as a piece of interesting info - the furry thing on the outside of a kilt, which is called a sporan, is the pelt of a wild haggis. The furry thing on the inside of a man's kilt is called his bollocks.

    --

  • This article reminds me of possibly one of the coolest easter eggs ever included in a game. That of Nessie randomly appearing in some of you lakes in Simcity 2000. :)


    --------------------------------------

  • I still hear people citing the pictures from last century as being evidence to Nessies presence. In fact, they are allegedly fake. There was an article in the Sunday Telegraph from a while back (probably spring or summer '94). The last guy in the conspiracy behind the photos told the story from his deathbed of how they faked the pictures. They built a small model submarine. The story was originally believed because the pictures looked good and one of the "eye-witnesses" was <upper-class English accent> an officer </upper-class English accent> in the Navy.
  • Hey, if you're looking to go searching for a big mythical aquatic pleiosaur, there's no need to fly over the Atlantic. Just head up to Vermont or NY and check out Champ! [champquest.com]

    I've read more detailed, recent reports of Champ sightings than anything from Nessie enthusiasts. They've even figured out his (her?) taxonomic identity and given it a scientific genus (Champtanystropheus). If you go to the lakeside park in Burlington there's a statue commemorating all the sightings. Champ has even been commemorated by Uhaul [uhaul.com]!

    And the Green Mountains and the Adirondacks are gorgeous this time of year. ;-)

  • Project BLUE SCREEN, ye eedjit!

    /Brian
  • Coelacanth. (Though I think coelo- is acceptable as well -- I get hits for both.)

    The thing about Nessie: if there is such a beast, in all likelihood there are a number of them, with a decent-sized gene pool. If that's the case, how is it that we have never seen anything that fits the description? Surely the bottom of Loch Ness has been dragged a number of times -- how is it that we've never found anything resembling a Nessie skeleton? No mystery carcasses washed up on the beach (like, say, giant squids), no locals salting them down and eating them (like the above mentioned ancient fish).

    I can't quite tell whether you're defending or discounting the Nessie hypothesis, so I can't say whether I'm strengthening or rebutting your point. But the idea that there are real monsters on Earth doesn't mean that we're going to find Nessie.

    /Brian
  • Q: What's worn under a kilt?
    A: Nothing, it's all in perfect working order
    da dum dum
    ---
  • Yes, Loch Ness does sit slap-bang on top of the Great Glen Fault - but an earthquake in Scotland means about 1R... Hardly an event that's felt, never mind the frequency of these (non)events.

    I read a similar article yesterday that stated that the surface disturbances weren't caused by the movement of the tremor, but by gasses that escaped from fissues or somesuch during the quake.

    Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups. [thedaythatcounts.org]
  • After some digging, I found this reference to the "Surgeon's Photograph", the most famous picture of the monster: http://www.unmuseum.org/nesshoax.htm [unmuseum.org]
  • The egg. A really big one.

  • reminds me of my theory... (Score:3)

    by option8 ( 16509 ) on Thursday June 28, 2001 @06:43AM (#123729) Homepage
    when i used to go skiing and swimming at a large local lake, i would often come upon large, seemingly solitary waves out in the middle of an otherwise calm channel

    these "monster waves" were usually the result of an infrequent combination of boat wakes or one wake interfering with itself in an inlet. the odd triangular waves would perpetuate themselves, and travel across the lake until finally diminishing on the far shore, or by coming upon another boat's wake.

    it was a fun pastime to track these guys down whilst on skis and jump them, but i thought nothing of the phenomenon until a few years later. that's when i read something (i think it was in popular science or discover magazine) about these large mysterious (and dangerous, as in iceberg dangerous) triangular waves in the north atlantic. study had proven that these were the result of converging currents and strong winds. until then, they were a mystery.

    i thought, hey, if the same thing can happen in the north atlantic, and nobody knows until now how they form, maybe it's the same thing that's happening at my lake.. and maybe at other lakes - like loch ness - that have boat traffic on them.

    anyhoo, i still want to see someone pull a live one out of the loch in a net, but until then i think a lot of the "humps" people see are just caused by wind, or temperature inversion, or seismic activity, or my monster waves...
  • It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.

    --

  • grab a straw and drain the lake. We'll never know for sure until we do!


    Murphy's Law of Copiers

  • A good model might be just as hard to find as Nessie.

  • Don't forget...

  • You forgot to mention that the male haggis has long left legs and the female has long right legs. Males go round the hills anticlockwise, females clockwise. This is how the males and females meet; they mate, and make haggis-bairns (also called haggis-kins or haggis-lings)

  • absolutely! I grew up near Lake Champlain on the NY side. We had a billboard sign with names/dates of sightings. Been awhile since i looked, but there were quite a few. Nessie's got nothin on champ :)
  • Possibly there *was* something in the lake way back when, that has since died, left or been captured by the Weekly World News, and every sighting since can be explained by natural causes coupled with the notion planted into peoples heads that there is "something in the lake."

  • Don't forget the weather balloons that go off course and end up hovering over the lock at low altitudes.
  • Well if the tremors around the lake created the myth of the dragon, then a lot of people in the area would be conditioned to interpret whatever they see in the lake as a dragon/dinosaur.

    Personally I think people are just seeing other animals and just assuming it's a dinosaur. Remember, Loch Ness IS connected to the ocean through canals, and various ocean creatures such as seals, porpoises, eels, etc. do get in...
    --
  • "The Loch never gives up its dead".
    The cold water, coupled with the low pH due to runoff, causes all corpses to sink.
  • in all likelihood there are a number of them, with a decent-sized gene pool.

    And ecologically speaking, Loch Ness probably couldn't support any real population of huge predators.
    --
  • ...too big of a local cash cow .... it's just a lot more fun to imagine...

    And those two reasons are why religion will never die. There will always be people who prefer to believe in gods over more prosaic explanations. As long as someone stands to benefit finanically, there'll be preachers of the faith-du-jour catering to that preference.

    Step right up and git your levitating gurus, silver lizards and Nessies here! Don't push! There's enough for everybody...

  • Back on line FULL TIME - with added SHEEP!!! I saw that and almost closed my browser by reflex.

  • Is it just me who thinks "Luigi Piccardi" is the italian version of (Jean-) Luc Picard?

    Or should I just stay away from this tv for some time?

  • Elvis in a UFO (offtopic) (Score:3)

    by dkoyanagi ( 222827 ) on Thursday June 28, 2001 @08:10AM (#123744)
    Every time I see a story about Loch Ness it reminds me of the following story.

    Up here in Canada there's a national lottery called the 6/49. The odds of hitting the jackpot is approximately 1 in 14 million, yet thousands of people buy tickets every week.

    Anyway, about 6 years ago I heard a story on the radio about how London bookies sets odds for weird things happening. I can't remember the exact odds but they went something like this:

    Elvis being found alive - 400:1
    Loch Ness monster being captured - 600:1
    A UFO landing on the White House lawn - 1000:1

    And the biggest of all

    A UFO driven by Elvis crashing into Loch Ness and killing the monster - 14 million to 1

    which are the same odds as hitting the 6/49 jackpot. Kinda puts things into perspective.

  • The sieche theory (Score:3)

    by Spasemunki ( 63473 ) on Thursday June 28, 2001 @08:16AM (#123745) Homepage
    This sounds compatible with, but distinct from, a theory offered up several years ago in an issue of scientific american. The idea was that there was a sieche (could be spelling this incorrectly), or a standing water wave, oscillating inside Loch Ness. These waves produce some very weird wave forms, such as waves in the apperant absence of wind, glassy calm at odd times, et cetera. At times, they 'go exponential', and the waves grow to a size where they begin dragging debris up off the bottom of the lake, such as sunken tree trunks. The combination of weird looking waves, weird water patterns, and dark colored, water-logged debris surfacing can make for a very convincing monster show.

    What makes the theory more interesting is the fact that the same sort of wave has been identified in Lake Champlain in Vermont, which is, as all good Vermonters know, the home of Champy, the Lake Champlain monster. Both Champlain and Ness are deep, narrow lakes, of the sort given to producing sieches. Of course, on at least one instance, the monster in Champlain has been a gigantic sturgeon (it was shot and killed by a woman who saw it thrashing in the water behind her house), but a wave of this sort, periodically disturbed by seismic activity, would seem to be likely to produce the off shapes in the water that people have reported seeing.

    And as someone may have mentioned, the best argument against there being a Nessie in the sense of a giant monster is the ecology of the lake. Several studies have been done of the lake, and every one of them finds that the food chain in the lake could not support a large predator, much less the breeding stock that would be neccesary to keep the sightings going for hundreds of years.

    "Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
  • Can anyone out there with a good fluid dynamics model run an earthquake simulation on Loch Ness and see what happens?

    What happens? I'd say that when someone uses fluid dynamic model to try to see the Loch Ness Monster, they waste an inordinate amount of time, that's what happens.

  • You're assuming Nessie is in fact a predator. I've never gotten the sense that the legend was ever particularly clear on that point. Besides, the predator isn't always the big fish in the pond, so to speak -- a lot of times the prey is bigger.

    /Brian
  • Rolling down the floor?

  • Seals and porpoises are mammals. What do they do, hold their breath for a couple of miles?


    Rev. Dr. Xenophon Fenderson, the Carbon(d)ated, KSC, DEATH, SubGenius, mhm21x16
  • So, what you're saying is, when there are seismic tremors, Nessie gets uncomfortable and diplays the otherwise unusual behavior of coming to the surface?

    Yes, this is tongue-in-cheek, but when A correlates with B, it is just as possible that A causes B as it is that B causes A. It seems that very few people account for this in their reasoning about phenomenological studies.
    --
  • Or else seismic activity is pissing it off, making it move around and try to find a more comfortable spot.

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  • Proves nothing! (Score:3)

    by FTL ( 112112 ) <slashdot@neil.frase[ ]ame ['r.n' in gap]> on Thursday June 28, 2001 @09:46AM (#123753) Homepage
    So they've found a posative correlation between earthquakes and Nessie sightings. One interpretation is that the earthquakes are causing ripples in the water which look like a monster. But another interpretation is that Nessie (like most animals) doesn't like earthquakes and is forced to the surface whenever there is one. :-)

    Disclaimer: I live five miles from Loch Ness
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  • > Remember, Loch Ness IS connected to the ocean through canals, and various ocean creatures such as seals, porpoises, eels, etc. do get in...

    I live just a few miles from Loch Ness, and I can tell you, it would be extremely improbable for seals or porpoises to get through the Caledonian canal. The canal isn't the problem, it is the ridiculously long set of locks that they'd have to navigate. They don't call it the "Highlands" of Scotland for nothing.
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  • Well even in terms of biomass there isn't much there; I don't think Loch Ness has that many aquatic plants. Maybe one or two could be supported, but not a viable population.
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  • I've heard that seals sometimes arrive through the River Ness, but I could be mistaken. Anyway, I should have said "can" instead of "do" get through the canal.
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  • But they were IN Scotland. They'd probably consider themselves more genuine than later Celtic groups...
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