From http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/outdoors/articles/jelly/:
Question: What is this strange jelly people are finding on grassland throughout Scotland? A BBC Radio Scotland Out of Doors listener came across some in the Pentlands and his finding has sparked quite a debate, with several people sending in their own photos of similar findings.
[...]Listen to Out of Doors on air each weekend and on BBC iPlayer to hear more... and tune in to BBC Radio 4 on 8 February to hear a 15 minute documentary entitled The Star Jelly Mystery.
All seems innocent enough, right? Then you probably need to read my article "It's raining them: the microscopic invasion" which was published in tEiN #3...
Back in the mid twentieth century Charles Fort christened them fafrotskies (a contraction of “falls from the skies”), but accounts of mysterious objects dropping from the heavens have been around since records began. In ancient times such events were often believed to be bad omens; portents of impending disaster or perhaps even signs of the beginning of The End. Nowadays we tend to consider such occurrences as harmless anomalies; falls of sea creatures are readily dismissed as having been thrown into the upper atmosphere by waterspouts, huge sheets of ice are explained as human lavational waste ejected from aeroplanes at high altitudes. There are however, some items which tumble to Earth whose very origin is just as much of a mystery as their unprecedented precipitation. [read the rest in tEiN #3]Perhaps I might need to write a follow up?
- John
Wiki links:
Star Jelly
Panspermia
BBC Scotland report
