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Science

Black Blobs Appearing In Camden, NJ 88

Posted by michael from the do-not-worry-about-the-industrial-pollutants dept.
Ieshan writes "Strange alien scares or just New Jersey Pollution? Occam's razor points towards the latter, but still, odd black blobs are appearing in a New Jersey city - no joke. CNN has the story - apparently, no one can identify them yet. Investigators say that they're not petrolium based, and that's about all anyone knows. On the plus side, at least they don't have stalks with green eyes?"
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Black Blobs Appearing In Camden, NJ More

Black Blobs Appearing In Camden, NJ

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  • A vote for gum (Score:1, Funny)

    by yasth ( 203461 )
    They are everywhere in populated areas. They are gum.

    • Re:A vote for gum (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by ceejayoz ( 567949 )
      Gum that everyone notices at once and that gets larger over time? RTFA...
      • Actually they said shrinks over time. Supposedly, although they didn't show a pic of one, it starts at up to 6 inches and then goes down to the size of a half dollar coin.

    • I see splots in down-town L.A. and Frisco also.

      I guess it to be gum too.

      I figure there are plenty to test, so we should have an answer one of these days. Do I get mod points if I am right? (Slashdot Vegas)

      Either that it is alien boogers.
  • When the blobs start moving under their own power, then we should start worrying, and get the nukes ready.

    • Why wait, I think nj could survive a tactical nuclear strike.
    • Go right ahead, drop the bomb on our heads. we would think it's just another fireworks display.

      I guess you never been to NJ, home of the Toxic Avenger, home of some of the best superfund sites, and yes Jimmy Hoffa is under Giant Stadium somewhere.

      Nobody in NJ would even notice that you dropped it, If anything the large hole you would make would be converted into a rather large public pool or roman hot bath.

  • yup.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jeffy124 ( 453342 )
    I go to school in Philadelphia, which is across the river from Camden, and grew up in southern Camden County, NJ, a comfortable 18 miles from Camden's state-leading crime rate and once close-to-nation-leading murder rate.

    Anyways, I've seen this story on the local news. One suspicion is jet fuel falling from planes landing at Philly International, but I dont think that explanation holds much as why havent these blobs been there for however many years the airport has been there?

    I personally would not be surprised if it's drug related. Philly started a huge crack down on drugs in recent weeks, causing many druggies to leave town. Camden then started their own crack down because that's where many druggies went.
    • One suspicion is jet fuel falling from planes landing at Philly International, but I dont think that explanation holds much as why havent these blobs been there for however many years the airport has been there?

      Because Philly International [phl.org] changed their flight patterns about 2 years ago. Now the line is almost a direct line from Lindenwold to the Airport, along roughly the same track as the PATCO high speed line [drpa.org].
      Sit in the Lindenwold [drpa.org]parking lot at watch them line up for final approach. The view is even better at Ferry Avenue [drpa.org].
      • that would make sense. I live in Clementon (next town over from Lindenwold), about a mile up Berlin Rd from the Park. A few years ago I was landing on a flight from Florida to PHI, and saw the big ferris wheel and my house in the same view.

        Anyways, I saw on Channel 6 News last night that the blobs have been solved - Parafin Wax most from likely from candlelight vigils and such.

  • it's fallout... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Galahad ( 24997 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @01:13PM (#3999730) Homepage
    from Bruce Springsteen's latest album.

  • How is this possible!? (Score:5, Funny)

    by quantax ( 12175 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @01:14PM (#3999736) Homepage
    As a resident of NJ for the last 20 years, I can say that there is no way this could possibly happen. As my fellow residents can vouch, NJ is the cleanest place of all the places in the world. Where else in the world can you wake up to the the beautiful view of a smoke-stack filled skyline, emitting fluffy plumes of green tinged smoke. Or perhaps the placid lakes and ponds, that maintain their rainbow colored, slick surfaces all year around. No sir, you cannot be more in tune with nature unless you live in NJ.
    • While I realize the joke you're making, you must live near Newark. Come down south some, and you'll find farmland and the Pine Barrens. It's a few miles off the turnpike.
      • You guessed correctly. Actually, I have been camping in southern NJ a couple times; the pine barrens are pretty nice and I know as well as anyone the southern NJ can be as hickish & rural as Alabama. But we're still 'Dirty Jersey' since the north is where all the attention is directed, us being a massive suburb to NYC.
        • Dirty Jersey also exists not just near NYC, but all the way down the turnpike, enhancing that Dirty Jersey feel to people traveling from say Washington DC to New York. That's why I mentioned comming away from the TP by a few miles.

          As mentioned in another post, I grew up in Camden County, about 18 miles from where the blobs are. The area is on the western fringes of the Pine Barrens, and the Barrens are slowly losing their space to urban housing developments.
      • LOL. I live in Newark... and I take offense. :-p. Just kidding... a price to pay to go to the best comp sci school in the area. :)

        My dad is moving to Lindenwold and he hasnt heard about it yet...

        My guess is it's one of those Weird NJ things...
    • Well at least the Passaic river hasn't caught on fire for a few years now.

      Once that happened, I moved to Maryland...

  • Why isn't it on cars? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Darkstorm ( 6880 ) <lorddarkstorm@h[ ]ail.com ['otm' in gap]> on Friday August 02, 2002 @01:18PM (#3999766)
    well, if its something falling from the sky then it should realisticly be on everything, including cars. Actually it should be getting on people also.

    • So all we have to do is to see if she weighs as much as a duck.

      Anyway it reminds me of a fortian story about some french scientist who was called to a village where people have been reporting that rock were falling out of the sky.
      He went there. Saw the rocks. Saw how they were driven into the ground like they fell out the sky.
      Then he concluded they made it up as there are no rocks in the sky how can they fall out the sky?
      case solved.
      • Actually, I'm not saying it isn't happening, just that they talk about it on the sidewalk, but not on the cars, or getting on people. It was a bit week on details. But IF it was something that was falling from the sky then it should be on just about everything that isn't covered up.

        First step in figuring any problem out is to determine what is and isn't possible. So if its not on the cars..isn't falling on people...ect. If its only on sidewalks (and I'm assuming the roads) then it would seem to be something that is either accumulating and condension on the ground, or being dropped by people.

        Of course it just might not like cars..eheh
      • I remember a story about an (American founding father's?) reaction to reports of a small meteor strike before the existence of such things was widely documented:

        "I'd rather believe that two Yankees lied, than that a rock fell from the sky."

        It was a perfect application of the principle of Ockham's razor, except that in this case, the weirder explanation happened to be true.

        If anyone knows who made the quote, or the origin of this story, please post.

  • Well, i always wondered... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Bob Lentine, assistant commissioner of the county health department, said he thinks the stuff might be ... discharge from the jets that fly directly overhead from nearby Philadelphia."

    Ahhhh, so that's where they empty the toilets in planes.

  • The article (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The article states that they were not able to confirm that it was petroleum based. This is completely different from showing it is not petroleum based. If you don't know why, you have a poor understanding of hypothesis testing and the scientific method in general. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Just because you can't confirm that some stranger is who they say they are doesn't mean they are lying. Etc.

    • Re:The article (Score:3, Insightful)

      by JabberWokky ( 19442 )
      Actually it is quite possible that the fact the field test didn't work was proof it wasn't tar or oil from cars - as the test may have been reliable for those forms of petroleum products, and while it eliminated those possibilities, it did not totally eliminate other forms of hydrocarbons. The way the article is worded, I can easily see that as a possibility, but given the confused wording, I would not lend any credence to anything "stated" in the article.

      Did a satellite fall to earth in that town recently? If so, even if the town suddenly dies off, I wouldn't worry - it'll probably mutate to a harmless state very quickly.

      --
      Evan

  • Bob Lentine, assistant commissioner of the county health department, said he thinks the stuff might be industrial pollutants or fuel discharge from the jets that fly directly overhead from nearby Philadelphia. In any case, it's probably nothing to worry about, he said.
    Yeah, Nothing to worry about at all. Just chemical waste or something. Nothing to see here...

  • It's roofing g tar (Score:5, Insightful)

    by netringer ( 319831 ) <maaddr-slashdot@NospaM.yahoo.com> on Friday August 02, 2002 @01:46PM (#3999941) Journal
    A noticed the black blobs on new sidewalks right here in Chicago. I could see a lot of dots on the sidewalk below when I looked down from the 'L' platform. I figured that they were chewing gum but wondered how there could be so much.

    It makes sense that it's tar that flows off of the roofs in the extreme heat. I saw a temperature of 106 degrees F on concrete a few weeks ago. Black flat roofs probably get a lot hotter.
    • Unlikely. Roofing tar is petroleum-based, the article stated that this stuff is not.

      I'm betting on The Blob.
    • Actually, the article says that it is not roofing tar. Or at least according to the field test, when they actually take more time they may find that the test was inaccurate.
    • I just (like 10 min ago) did a study over about 4 blocks of sidewalk. It was along a large road going through a very large campus (UIUC). I counted ~1100 black spots ~2-3cm in diameter, just like the ones in the report. There were virtualy none under overhangs, but the highest concentrations were just outside overhangs, and near trash cans. Trees seemed to have no effect, whether the spots were under, near, or far away from them seemed to have no effect on concentration. Far away from buildings, there were fewer spots, but high concentrations still existed ~10m away. The few parts of brick sidewalk (around covered bus stops) had almost no spots. There was not nearly as much in streets, but there was in crosswalks

      The fact that they are concentrated around trash cans and near buildings, not under overhangs but under trees, and were in crosswalks but not streets all lead me to guess that they are placed there by induviduals, so probably chewing gum built up with crud. As for why they were not under overhangs, maybe there is a sub-concious predispositon not to spid out gum indoors, and the overhang might trick their sub-concious into thinking that they are still inside.

      Roofing tar would all be concentrated right up against the buildings.

      I suspect that this is the same phenomena as in NJ
      • With this kind of description, it would make more sense if it was some kind of weird mold eating the crap that has sunk into the concrete. Mostly likely spreading underneath the concrete.

        t.

  • Blobs? Pits? Same old story? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by skaffen42 ( 579313 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @01:54PM (#3999988)
    This reminds me of the Seattle Window Pitting Hysteria [csicop.org] (about half way downb the page).

    So these days we blame aliens instead of demons, but that is about the only thing that changes.

    Idiocy is a universal constant...
    • Wait, so was the cause ever found? Or was it just normal pitting that many people have in their windshields from gravel, etc. My last car had one...

      That would be funny if some guy in that other town suddenly had a pit in his windshield that he couldn't explain, and ran around in circles blaming it on fallout, and then the rest of the people of the town noticed pits that they haddn't seen before and fed the hysteria, and then as it passed by word of mouth more people in seattle started noticing, and by that time it seems as if there is an epidemic of winshield pitting, when actualy it is just normal.

      Yeah, that would be funny...


      That sentence was way too long, wasn't it?
      • Should have used a link to a more in-depth article [historylink.org], but I tend to forget that other people don't spend as much time on skeptic websites as I do and wouldn't recognize the story immediatly. This probably can be explained by my not having a life. :)

        Anyway, here is a quote from the article above that puts things in perspective:

        "Nevertheless, conventional wisdom lay with the scientists. Further investigation by the City of Seattle Police Department showed that most dings pitted older car windshields. In cases where auto lots were involved, brand new cars were unpitted, whereas used older cars showed signs of pitting. Police found rare instances of "copycat" vandalism, but most of the cases had a simple explanation: The pits had been there all along, but no one had noticed them until now."

        So there you have it.

  • Do you think that if they mapped the distribution of these in a Geographic Information System, it would point to the source? Such as being distributed mainly along a flight path, or exactly downwind of a certain factory, or in a radial pattern from GumWorld(r).

    • (* Do you think that if they mapped the distribution of these in a Geographic Information System, it would point to the source? *)

      Do you mean like crop circles being a secret message, or a trail left by a dripping machine?

      Hey, that would be cool: if you plot them all, they make the shape of Elvis.

  • The black blobs... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Muad'Dave ( 255648 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @02:37PM (#4000330) Homepage

    don't need to "take over" Camden, NJ - they can have it, for all I care.

  • <Some General> Mr. President, I regret to inform you that project XV 543b has escaped! Black tar-like spots have been appearing on sidewalks everywhere in Camden NJ, and at they're rate of multiplication they will be ready to attack in roughly two weeks. Shall I order an evacuation sir?

    <Dubya> NJ eh?

    <Some General> Yes Sir.

    <Dubya> Screw 'em they voted Democrat.
  • Bob Lentine, assistant commissioner of the county health department, said he thinks the stuff might be industrial pollutants or fuel discharge from the jets that fly directly overhead from nearby Philadelphia. In any case, it's probably nothing to worry about, he said.

    Boy, that makes me feel a lot better.

  • It seems to me that black blobs like this occur where cigarette butts are likely to have been discarded. The ones I see do not visually thick or gooey enough to be gum--and they're black, black, black. Looks to me like someone dropped a drop of asphalt crack filler on the concrete or brick surface. So would there be some process that would turn a cigarette filter and/or cigarette ash and/or unburned tobacco into such a blob?
  • I find it supicious that these people claim that the blobs start out 6" accross, and then shrink way down to dry 1" spots, yet there are only pictures of the spots.

    In a google image search of the word sidewalk, here are the first few pics that come up in which the sidewalk can be seen clearly enough to make out any potential spots:
    spots [thecapras.org]
    No spots (but close in) [magliery.com]
    2 small spots [nationalmathtrail.org]
    no spots, but quite funny [thedamnedestthing.com]
    no spots [house.gov]
    small spots [art.net]
    small spots [art.net]

    Ok, so there is some background spotting on many sidewalks, which MAY explain the smaller ones. The yet unphotographed larger ones could be from public exaguration/hysteria. here are several examples of such events. In particular look at the seattle winshield pitting in 1954, and the school gas leaks in 88. I'd bet that those spots are usualy there, just that nobody paid attention until now.

  • Beware of The Blob, it creeps
    And leaps and glides and slides
    Across the floor
    Right through the door
    And all around the wall
    A splotch, a blotch
    Be careful of The Blob

    Words and music by Burt Bacharach.
  • From the article (emphasis mine):

    A quick field test wasn't able to confirm that the substance was petroleum-based, said Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Fred Mumford. That seems to rule out tar from roofs or street repairs and leaky cars.

    This is not the same as what the OP claimed: "Investigators say that they're not petrolium based" (sic).

    Maybe it is just tar or cigarette remains.
  • Maybe it is a publicity stunt for Dreamcatcher, which is being made into a movie...
  • The black blob has been found to be very dangerous. A woman, Denise Crosby, 45, was killed mysteriously when trying to walk pass the blob. Police are warning New Jersey residents to stay away while scientists determine how the blob caused her death.

  • Article: A quick field test wasn't able to confirm that the substance was petroleum-based, said Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Fred Mumford.

     Slashdot: It's roofing tar
    Obligatory simpsons reference:
    Lisa: I don't understand professor, why didn't your tests show that the skeleton was a fake.
    Dr. Gould:     I'm going to be honest with you Lisa, I never did the tests.
    [Dr. Gould walks away]

    I mean...it's Camden
  • It was just reported on the local news here in Philadelphia.

    They speculate it got there from candle-drippings from all the candlelight vigils they have for people getting shot to death, etc.
  • It is moldy saliva.
    I saw those spots while growing up in a small town (mitchell) in southwestern Ontario, and I still see them now in Toronto.
    I always saw them in higher concentrations in places where many people smoke (for example smoking sections at highschools).
    They are about the size of a spitwad, and about the shape of a normal one too...
    This would also explain being found just outside of overhangs (as another user pointed out). People will crowd under an overhang in the rain, but they wont spit on each other, they will spit on the ground where all the rain is.
    It's no big deal, just use a pressurewasher to clean them off every couple of months and you have nothing to worry about.
    Give the conspiracy theories a rest.

  • Mystery solved. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Peter T Ermit ( 577444 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @09:21PM (#4002785)
    They're wax [yahoo.com].
  • If it's the Garden State, things should be growing, right? I mean smoke stacks are goin' up like friggin rabbits.

  • bubble burst (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @11:55PM (#4003212) Journal
    It is all the falling dots from the dying dot-com's
  • The pollution in the air starts settling out and eventually it's only possible to survive up sky scrapers.

    Can't recall the name, but the collection I read it in was 'The Ghost Light'

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