Star jelly
Star jelly is a gelatinous substance sometimes found on grass or even on branches of trees. According to folklore, it is deposited on the Earth during meteor showers. Star jelly is described as a translucent or grayish-white gelatin that tends to evaporate shortly after having "fallen." Explanations have ranged from the materials being the remains of frogs, toads, or worms, to the byproducts of cyanobacteria, to the paranormal. Reports of the substance date back to the 14th century and have continued to the present day.
History
There have been reports of 'star-jelly' for centuries. John of Gaddesden, for example, mentions stella terrae in his medical writings, describing it as "a certain mucilaginous substance lying upon the earth" and suggesting that it might be used to treat abscesses. A fourteenth-century Latin medical glossary has an entry for uligo, described as "a certain fatty substance emitted from the earth, that is commonly called 'a star which has fallen'". Similarly, an English-Latin dictionary from around 1440 has an entry for "sterre slyme" with the Latin equivalent given as assub.The Oxford English Dictionary lists a large number of other names for the substance, with references dating back to the circa-1440 English-Latin dictionary entry mentioned above: star-fallen, star-falling, star-jelly, star-shot, star-slime, star-slough, star-slubber, and star-slutch.
The slime mold Enteridium lycoperdon is called "caca de luna" by the locals in the state of Veracruz in Mexico.
A long article in the paranormal magazine Fate declared star jelly to be of extraterrestrial origin, calling it "cellular organic matter" which exists as "prestellar molecular clouds" which float through space.
In The Book of British Amphibians and Reptiles, author M. Smith states that star jelly is most likely formed from the glands in the oviducts of frogs and toads. Birds and mammals will eat the animals but not the oviducts which, when they come into contact with moisture, swell and distort leaving a vast pile of jellylike substance sometimes also referred to as otter jelly.
In 1910, T. Mckenny Hughes ruminated in Nature as to why meteors were associated with star jelly by poets and ancient writers, and observed that the jelly seemed to "grow out from among the roots of grass".
Scientific analysis and theories
- Observations made of star jelly in Scotland support the theory that one origin of star jelly is spawn jelly from frogs or toads, which has been vomited up by amphibian-eating creatures. However, no frog spawn has ever approached the size of some reported cases of star jelly. The German terms Sternenrotz and Meteorgallerte are known to refer to more or less digested frog spawn vomited by predators.
- Scientists commissioned by the National Geographic Society have carried out tests on samples found in the United States, but have failed to find any DNA in the material.
- Thomas Pennant in the 18th century believed the material to be "something vomited up by birds or animals".
- Nostoc, a type of fresh water blue-green algae forms spherical colonies made of filaments of cells in a gelatinous sheath. When on the ground, it is ordinarily not seen; but after rainfall it swells up into a conspicuous jellylike mass which is sometimes called star-jelly.
- Slime molds are possible causes, appearing suddenly, exhibiting a very gelatinous appearance at first and later changing to a dust-like form which is dispersed by rain and wind. The colours range from a striking pure white as in Enteridium lycoperdon, to pink as in Lycogala epidendrum, to purple, bright yellow, orange, and brown.
Examples
- 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.
- 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 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 but – contrary to some reports – the substance has yet to be identified.
- In the BBC programme Nature's Weirdest Events, Series 4, episode 3, 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 on the jelly which may point to the demise of the frog.
In fiction
- Sir John Suckling, in 1641, wrote a poem which contained the following lines:
As he whose quicker eye doth trace
A false star shot to a mark'd place
Do's run apace,
And, thinking it to catch,
A jelly up do snatch
- Henry More, in 1656 wrote:
That the Starres eat...that those falling Starres, as some call them, which are found on the earth in the form of a trembling gelly, are their excrement.
- John Dryden, in 1679, wrote:
When I had taken up what I supposed a fallen star I found I had been cozened with a jelly.
- William Somervile, in 1740, wrote in The Talisman:
Swift as the shooting star, that gilds the night
With rapid transient Blaze, she runs, she flies;
Sudden she stops nor longer can endure
The painful course, but drooping sinks away,
And like that falling Meteor, there she lyes
A jelly cold on earth.
Sir Walter Scott, in his novel The Talisman, wrote:
"Seek a fallen star," said the hermit, "and thou shalt only light on some foul jelly, which, in shooting through the horizon, has assumed for a moment an appearance of splendour."
An unidentifiable substance that falls to earth during a meteor-type event forms the background to "The Colour Out of Space", a 1927 short story by the American horror and science fiction author H. P. Lovecraft.
Some observers have made a connection between star jelly and the Paramount movie The Blob, in which a gelatinous monster slime falls from space. The Blob, which was released in 1958, was supposedly based on the Philadelphia reports from 1950 and specifically a report in the Philadelphia Inquirer called "Flying 'Saucer' Just Dissolves" where four police officers encountered a UFO debris that was described as evaporating with a purple glow leaving nothing. Paramount Pictures was also sued for this movie by the author Joseph Payne Brennan, who had written a short story published in Weird Tales Magazine in 1953 called "Slime" about a similar creature.
In the 1978 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the alien spores that fall to Earth in a rain shower form blobs of jelly that grow into flowers which produce the seed pods.
In the 2011 novel The Isle of Blood by Rick Yancey, star jelly is the saliva of a monster called "Magnificum" that falls to earth along with blood and shredded human remains, sometimes weaved into a nest or bowl of sorts, known as a "nidus". Anyone who comes in contact with Pwdre Ser becomes "infected", and will slowly decline in health until they are literally a living corpse.
Mary-Ann Constantine's 2016 novel, Star-Shot, is named after another word for the phenomenon, and features a character taking a sample to be analysed.