What washes up on the island's shores? Apparently airplane propellers. Jars of money. Mammoth bones. Lots of messages in bottles.
The nearby shipping lanes, strong currents, and steady winds make Texel a magnet for anything adrift in Northern Europe…..
http://www.coastalliving.com/travel/other-coasts/treasure-island-texel-netherlands
“the sound and smell of dying centuries” of the "river highway" [It’s basically a book review, but interesting]
http://www.splicetoday.com/writing/london-in-fragments-a-mudlark-s-treasure
A species that looks like a cross between an octopus and a squid, but is most closely related to a cuttlefish. "This species spends life on the seafloor, activating a sticky mucus jacket and burrowing into the sediment to camouflage, leaving their eyes poking out to spot prey like shrimp and small fish,"
http://www.phillyvoice.com/new-jersey-beachcomber-finds-mystery-us-army-ring/
So I looked it up, guess this one is more of a biscuit
The term sand dollar refers to species of extremely flattened, burrowing sea urchins belonging to the order Clypeasteroida. Some species within the order, not quite as flat, are known as sea biscuits
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/nation-world/national/article90622802.html
Yesterday's Island/Today's Nantucket (blog)
Beachcombing is simply searching the shores for items of interest. I find myself collecting seashells each time I go to the beach. There is always a shell ...
Tim Davies has collected more 2000 coins and other items with his metal detector after last weekend’s storms, at Ettalong Beach.
Scientists in Britain have recorded rhythms of a 13-billion-year-old star cluster. The 'music' is captivating, and it is also instrumental in furthering our understanding of the origins of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Well, perhaps not, though it is on the beach. It is from old stuff from the Pier, where it is being rebuilt after a fire. See http://hastingspeerlesspier.blogspot.co.uk/ for lots of information
And one is mostly sand, the other one is rocks and sand, then sand, then along by the beach huts it is pebbles, and then sand. I’ll try to get some photos later.
Our pebbles come first, then the sand, and mostly only at low tide. How about you Sandy?
(Alright, I did play around with it a bit! But it was on the sand, above the pebbles, on our beach.)
And I am glad we are back up, so to speak. Anyway, I was reading Falconer’s Lure (Sandy will know what I mean, even if you don’t Alex!) and Peter said:
“I read an absolutely terrifying book once about the moon being pushed out of its proper path and crashing into the earth. I s’pose it could happen!”
Isn’t that a bit spooky?
A spate of shipwrecks recently found near a group of Greek islands has given researchers new insights into how trade routes and sailing technology evolved in the Eastern Mediterranean. And with more exploration planned, additional discoveries are still likely.
The find is remarkable both for the sheer number of wrecks in the small area and the range of time periods the vessels came from.
The earliest wreck dates to the Archaic Period (700-480 B.C.), while the most recent is from the Late Medieval Period (16th century A.D.). Ships from the Classical Period (480-323 B.C.) and the Hellenistic Period (323-31 B.C.) were also found, though a majority—12 of the 22—sailed and sank at some point during the Late Roman Period (300-600 A.D.)
Scientists are keeping a close eye on a big asteroid that may pose an impact threat to Earth in a few decades.
The space rock, which is called 2011 AG5, is about 460 feet (140 meters) wide.
It may come close enough to Earth in 2040 that some researchers are calling for a discussion about how to deflect it.
Due to Google’s increased security, we (me, Sandy and Lexie) were locked out of the blog. Google said we were using it from a device not used before, which was not true in the case of any of us! But it seems to have fixed the problem now!
(Last year the tides must have been more favourable, as it seems to have been happening at dusk, which would be that much more atmospheric – maybe next year, maybe we could all do it?)
Firing pots
Then the tide comes in
This is the urban equivalent of beachcombing - looking on the beach for 'treasures' washed in by the sea – and today, for the third time, I spent several hours wandering around, picking up things and photographing others.
It was a special ‘open day’ as part of Totally Thames, the totally pants name for what used to be the Thames Festival.
Have a look here for finds that will make you green with envy – well, they do me! https://sites.google.com/site/thamesandfield/river-finds-1
Here are a couple of my photos
Remains of a cartwheel
Used to anchor ships pulled up onto the beach for repair.
Astronaut captures out-of-this-world photos of the 'supermoon-set' as it dips behind the Earth and stunning images from cities across the world.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2721202/Jaw-dropping-Photos-reveal-supermoon-outshining-Perseid-shower-fireball-champion-meteors-reaches-moon-Sunday-night.html#ixzz3A0okaCJc
“The little red tractor-beachcomber is busy combing our beach every morning along with two others – one blue and one green.” (http://alexandrazonis.com/tag/beachcomber/)
Apparently yes, just did a quick Internet search and returned over 264,000 results – not all relevant, but including something from Popular Mechanics in 1935 – but it was for cleaning the beach, but not beachcombing as we know it.
….. I dropped my camera phone in the sea for a very few seconds; it buzzed and died. I buried it in rice for some days. Still wouldn’t charge up. I left it in my underwear drawer until a few weeks ago, when I took it out, and connected it to a charger – and it charged up.
But it wouldn’t let me download my photos,not nohow. And now today, success. I was able to connect to wifi, and email the photos, and then (just experimenting) found Bluetooth was now working and I transferred the photos to my current phone. So beachcombing last year I came across this..
The Independent
A galaxy has thrown out a star cluster towards earth at more than two million miles per hour. But it is, thankfully, likely to miss our planet and “drift through the void between the galaxies for all time,” says the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
See last chapter of The Stone Summons - - - Buy Now! - also on Kindle
Astronomers have recorded a car-sized meteorite crashing into the Moon which created the longest and brightest lunar impact ever that was visible from Earth.
The meteorite weighing almost half a tonne hit the lunar surface in September last year, in Mare Nubium, or Sea of Clouds, a massive impact basin itself, one that filled with lava billions of years ago. This molten rock then froze in place, erasing much of the old craters that then populated the basin.
It now stretches across some 95,000 square miles (245,000 square kilometres) of the southern left portion of the moon’s face and it is easily identified with the naked eye or binoculars as a visibly dark patch on the face of the moon.
The impact produced an extraordinary flash which is the longest and brightest ever recorded on the Moon, the astronomers said.
This artwork depicts the blast formed from an impacting meteor on the lunar surface. Credit: NASA
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/10/dark-side-moon-turquoise-astronomers?CMP=ema_632
Measurements from a telescope in Hawaii mean that pedants may now argue that, technically speaking, if one wanted to be entirely accurate, the side of the moon referred to in Pink Floyd's 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon should really be described as "turquoise".
The dark side of the moon is not the same as the far side, which gets as much sunlight as the side facing us. The dark side is not lit directly by sunlight, but by light reflected from Earth. It is much fainter, and best seen around the time of the new moon.
"This is sunshine that struck the Earth, was coloured by the Earth, was reflected up to the moon, struck the moon, and then came back to us."
