Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/06/28/what-is-this-strange-metal-art.html
…
6 Likes
A bit that fell off a UFO shot down by the Russian navy… Or you know just a cover for something on a large ship or oil rig that fell off.
13 Likes
I’m putting all my chips on “probe droid.”
19 Likes
I am reminded of this passage from John Brunner’s 1975 novel The Shockwave Rider:
“The western powers, back in World War II … set their scientists to building devices which looked as though they absolutely must do something, put them in battered metal cases, took them out on a firing range and shot them up with captured enemy ammunition. Then they arranged for the things to be found by the Nazis. One such bit of nonsense could tie up a dozen top research personnel for weeks before they dared decide it wasn’t a brand-new secret weapon.”
Update: italicized book title.
21 Likes
Well it doesn’t look like one of these…
10 Likes
It must be alien technology. No way could humans make that much brown stuff with such perfect geometry.
17 Likes
Looks like part of a hydraulic head system.
5 Likes
There’s an access panel on there. Open her up!
8 Likes
4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42
14 Likes
A Zone generator! Let’s call the Zone Riders!
Seriously, this looks like one of those navigation buoys.
https://www.jinbomarine.com/2-4m-steel-buoy-navigation-buoy.html
3 Likes
The Graveyard of the Atlantic. More than five thousand ships are known to have sunk in those waters, and no doubt countless unknown vessels.
I’ve seen a couple of big ships crack up there myself, and there’s always old wreckage surfacing out of the sand after every big storm.
10 Likes
That’s my space ship…I was wondering where I parked it dammit. Thanks for finding it for me…just leave it there. Don’t touch it though…I activated the alarm and those batteries last for 3,000,000 years…it will disintegrate you.
6 Likes
And nobody has had the urge to dig a little???
8 Likes
Oooooh! So that’s where I left my Illudium Q-36 Space Modulator!
Where’s the kaboom? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom!
13 Likes
Really, it could be anything, not just of nautical origin. Everything ends up in the sea, so anything could wash up out of it.
3 Likes
The fact that there is a white all around anchor light mounted on it would seem to indicate that the top of it as it rests on the sand is the intended top of it, and that is is supposed to be in the water. So not an aircraft part or something washed out to sea in a storm and only now washed back in.
3 Likes
I sincerely doubt it just ‘washed up’ from anywhere. Big chunks of metal are persistently non-bouyant, in my experience.
It was left there, or abandoned there, and buried in the sand. Then it became visible. It did not ‘wash up’ on the tide.
3 Likes
13 Likes
Yeah, but…
Giant buoys do wash up on the beach, but they tend to be complete and buoyant. This thing could be the guts of a buoy, whose outer shell went missing somehow… Or it could have been buried there years ago in its current state.
Whatever it is, we can safely assume that it’s not worth more than scrap.
12 Likes
Part of Cpt. Nemo’s Nautilus.
2 Likes
