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A28 SCIENCE
Monday 16 SepteMber 2019
Summer of Blob: Maine sees more big, stinging jellyfish

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — found a five-foot specimen resembles a bloody crime
Seaside New England is washed ashore. scene.
known for rocky shores, "My husband said you're Record takes reports about
seafood shacks, chance not going to believe what's jellyfish encounters via a
whale sightings and, in re- over here, and I didn't," website , the Jellyfish Re-
cent months, lots of gooey, Rice-Barnes said. "We've porter, that allows beach-
tentacled blobs. seen red jellyfish before, goers and boaters to pro-
The Gulf of Maine and we've just never seen a red vide details about sightings.
some of its beaches, ever jellyfish that's huge." A couple of lion's manes
popular with tourists, have Jellyfish are tracked each five or six feet across, and
recorded a high number summer by Nick Record, many have been a foot
of sightings of a big jellyfish a senior research scientist and a half to two feet.
that has the ability to sting at Bigelow Laboratory for The lion's mane lives in cold
swimmers and occasionally Ocean Sciences in East waters in many parts of the
does. Boothbay, Maine. Typically world. The jellyfish uses its
The lion's mane jellyfish, the fewer than half the jellyfish tentacles to capture prey,
largest known variety, can reported are lion's manes. and its sting can be pain-
grow to five or more feet This year, almost all of sev- ful to humans, though not
across, with tentacles more eral hundred jellyfish ob- typically life-threatening.
than 100 feet long. served were the lion's mane At least five swimmers in
Such giant jellyfish are un- variety. The exact number Maine have reported stings
common, but beachgoers of total jellyfish sightings this year.
say larger than average isn't available yet, but Re- "Just a gigantic, scary jel-
ones have been exception- cord said it's on pace to be lyfish that you would not
ally plentiful this year in the in the typical range of 300 want to run into in the wa-
gulf, which touches Maine, to 700. ter," Record said of larger
two other states and two Unlike other jellyfish com- lion's manes. "It has been
Canadian provinces. mon off Maine, they're not kind of a steady stream of
Becky Rice-Barnes of Mari- entirely translucent. In the them all summer."
aville and her husband water, they resemble a "Every once in a while I get
Jimmy were out digging for In this May 12, 2019, photo provided by Rebecca Rice-Barnes, drifting fireball, and when pictures of people holding
claims at Maine's Lamoine Jimmy Barnes, of Mariaville, Maine, observes a large lion's mane washed on land they can a lion's mane jellyfish," he
Beach recently when they jellyfish that washed ashore on Lamoine Beach, Maine. collapse into a mess that said. "Don't do that."q
Associated Press

Study finds the universe might be 2

billion years younger

By SETH BORENSTEIN to the tricky problem of which would put the age
WASHINGTON (AP) — The figuring the universe's real of the universe at around
universe is looking younger age. 11.4 billion years.
every day, it seems. "We have large uncertainty Jee used a concept called
New calculations suggest for how the stars are mov- gravitational lensing —
the universe could be a ing in the galaxy," said Inh where gravity warps light
couple billion years young- Jee, of the Max Plank Insti- and makes far away ob-
er than scientists now esti- tute in Germany, lead au- jects look closer. They rely
mate, and even younger thor of the study in Thurs- on a special type of that
than suggested by two oth- day's journal Science . effect called time delay
er calculations published Scientists estimate the age lensing, using the chang-
this year that trimmed hun- of the universe by using the ing brightness of distant ob-
dreds of millions of years movement of stars to mea- jects to gather information
from the age of the cos- sure how fast it is expand- for their calculations.
mos. ing. If the universe is ex- But Jee's approach is only
The huge swings in scien- panding faster, that means one of a few new ones
tists' estimates — even this it got to its current size more that have led to different
This image made available by the European Space agency new calculation could be quickly, and therefore must numbers in recent years,
shows galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2012, an improved off by billions of years — re- be relatively younger. reopening a simmering
version of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image.
Associated Press flect different approaches The expansion rate, called astronomical debate of
the Hubble constant, is one the 1990s that had been
of the most important num- seemingly settled. Jee and
bers in cosmology. A larger outside experts had big ca-
Hubble Constant makes veats for her number. She
for a faster moving — and used only two gravitational
younger — universe. lenses, which were all that
The generally accepted were available, and so her
age of the universe is 13.7 margin of error is so large
billion years, based on a that it's possible the uni-
Hubble Constant of 70. verse could be older than
Jee's team came up with calculated, not dramati-
a Hubble Constant of 82.4, cally younger.q