STAR JELLY: What is it, and why?
On 11 November 1846, a luminous object estimated at 4 feet in diameter fell at Lowville, New York, leaving behind a heap of foul-smelling luminous jelly that disappeared quickly, according to Scientific American.
In 1950, four Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, policemen reported the discovery of "a domed disk of quivering jelly, 6 feet in diameter, one foot thick at the center and an inch or two near the edge". When they tried to pick it up, it dissolved into an "odorless, sticky scum".This incident inspired the 1958 movie The Blob.
On 11 August 1979, Sybil Christian of Frisco, Texas reported the discovery of several purple blobs of goo on her front yard following a Perseid meteor shower. A follow up investigation by reporters and an assistant director of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History discovered a battery reprocessing plant outside of town where caustic soda was used to clean impurities from the lead in the batteries, resulting in a purplish compound as a byproduct. The report was greeted with some skepticism, however, as the compounds at the reprocessing plant were solid, whereas the blobs on Christian's lawn were gelatinous. Others, however, have pointed out that Christian had tried to clear them off her lawn with a garden hose.
In December 1983, grayish-white, oily gelatin fell on North Reading, Massachusetts. Thomas Grinley reported finding it on his lawn, on the streets and sidewalks, and dripping from gas station pumps.
On several dates in 1994, "gelatinous rain" fell on Oakville, Washington.
It was reported via the Fortean Times that on the evening of 3 November 1996, a meteor was reported flashing across the sky of Kempton, Tasmania, just outside Hobart. The next morning, white translucent slime was reportedly discovered on the lawns and sidewalks of the town. In 1997, a similar substance fell in the Everett, Washington, area.
Star jelly was found on various Scottish hills in the autumn of 2009.
Blue balls of jelly rained down on a man's garden in Dorset in January 2012. Upon further analysis these proved to be sodium polyacrylate granules, a kind of superabsorbent polymer with a variety of common (including agricultural) uses. They were most likely already present on the ground in their dehydrated state, and had gone un-noticed until they soaked up water from the hail shower and consequently grew in size.
Several deposits were discovered at the Ham Wall nature reserve in England in February 2013. It has been suggested that these are unfertilised frog spawn, regurgitated frog innards, or a form of cyanobacteria.
In the BBC programme Nature's Weirdest Events, Series 4, episode 3, (14 January 2015) Chris Packham showed a specimen of "star jelly" and had it sent to the Natural History Museum, London, for a DNA analysis by Dr. David Bass who confirmed it was from a frog. He also found some traces of magpie DNA on the jelly which may point to the demise of the frog.
BLOGGER'S NOTES. I STILL do not know what star jelly is. I remember the guy in Ghost Busters being "slimed", and I've heard about viscous goo appearing on the walls at seances. But every incident listed here seems to have a different explanation. Or is science/the human mind just grasping and straining to try to explain the inexplicable? Right away I thought: manna in the wilderness, but if THIS is manna, I don't see how Moses could have gotten his people out the door. I wouldn't have known about any of this, except for the above video by Simon Whistler (who has something like ten or eleven YouTube channels AND a podcast. Ridiculous, really, and sometimes he sounds like a cross between James Mason and Churchill).
