Off the coast of South America in 1997, hydrophones originally set up by the US to detect incoming Soviet Submarines picked up a sound. That sound seemed to be from a live animal, but were that the case said animal would have been larger than a blue whale.

Nobody yet knows what caused it – but we’ve got the noise for your personal listening pleasure right here…

The Bloop is a sound picked up underwater in 1997, an unexplained sound. The best scientific minds out there still don’t know what it is. There’s no doubt been talk of it being some sort of a submersible alien craft skimming the bottom side of the various ocean’s waters, but the few clues its given seem to indicate its an animal. At least according to CNN anyway:

“While [the sound] bears the varying frequency hallmark of marine animals, it is far more powerful than the calls made by any creature known on Earth, Britain’s New Scientist reported on Thursday. It is too big for a whale and one theory is that it is a deep sea monster, possibly a many-tentacled giant squid.”

A mega-squid has been quickly discounted as the sound-source because those animals don’t have the body parts to make these types of noises. The way they can tell it’s too big to be a whale is by the magnitude of the sound that emanated from it. Another curious factor about it is the sound was recorded on multiple occasions in areas geographically close to each other. A website called Disclose.tv has a spattering of additional details:

“The sound, traced to somewhere around 50° S 100° W (South American southwest coast), was detected repeatedly by the Equatorial Pacific Ocean autonomous hydrophone array, which uses U.S. Navy equipment originally designed to detect Soviet submarines… it “rises rapidly in frequency over about one minute and was of sufficient amplitude to be heard on multiple sensors, at a range of over 5,000 km.”…it matches the audio profile of a living creature but there is no known animal that could have produced the sound. If it is an animal, it would have to be, reportedly, much larger than even a Blue Whale, the largest known animal on the earth.”

At the end of the day – it’s just a sound. Had the sound’s maker been caught on video then this may not be such a mystery. At the same time – if it had been caught on video – and the creature’s appearance was just too much to bear, maybe mankind would prefer to keep itself landlocked for the rest of our existence.

No more fish sandwiches.

Lets leave this mystery be.

Here’s the Bloop:

Only joking. That’s got nothing to do with the outcome of OJ Simpson’s trial at all. Well, technically it probably has got a bit to do with it, but let’s not get into that. In actual fact, the whole OJ Simpson trial revolves around a secret tape of the whole shebang, recorded by an auctioneer.

Sadly, though, as the court found out yesterday, the tape is just vague enough not to mean anything at all. Oh OJ Simpson, why couldn’t you have stormed into the hotel and said, clearly and within earshot of the microphone “What-ho, I’m OJ Simpson and these gun-wielding chaps here – boys, say hello, there’s no excuse for rudeness – are here to take these items which don’t even belong to me. Pip pip!” or whatever the opposite of that is that proves you’re innocent? You’d have saved us all a lot of time either way, you selfish git.

The OJ Simpson trial has been sort of interesting so far, but only because of all the berserk old men who keep pretending to have heart attacks on the stand and the way that somebody’s going to cry racist whatever the verdict. Other than that, things have felt a little staid.

Why’s that? Because there was one piece of evidence that the lawyers had been holding back on. One impossibly vital piece of evidence – the secretly-recorded tape of the alleged armed robbery.

It’s been a frustrating wait, because everyone has known about the existence of the tape ever since a clip of OJ Simpson bellowing “You think you can steal my shit?” leaked out onto the internet. And yesterday the jury at the OJ Simpson trial got to hear the tape.

Well, some of the tape, at least. The man who recorded the incident – auctioneer Thomas Riccio – seems to basically make weird little secret recordings of everything he ever does on the offchance he’ll be able to sell bits of it to TMZ. And the clips played yesterday were of an encounter with OJ Simpson prior to the alleged robbery and of the police officers who were combing the hotel room after the incident but didn’t find Riccio’s recordings.

First, OJ Simpson’s tape. What the prosecution would have really loved is a long discussion about guns and how none of the sports memorabilia he was seeking actually belonged to him. What they actually got was this, according to the LA Times:

“I’m gonna show up with a bunch of the boys and take the [stuff] back,” said the man prosecutors contend is Simpson… Prosecutors played the jury a second recording, made in Simpson’s Palms room after he returned from the pool, in which Simpson said, “I gotta be at my intimidating best.”

Now, although your vision of OJ Simpson’s intimidating best will vary depending on if you thought the book If I Did It was a work of fact or fiction – hint: one’s got knives in it and the other one hasn’t – to be fair, the tape recording doesn’t actually prove anything. But nor does the recording of the police officers, either, other than that they sound quite a lot like glory-hunting bellends:

“This is great. John said uh, yeah — he is like California can’t get him. . . . Now we’ll be like . . . got him.”

Maybe this will change in days to come, when the meatier chunks of Riccio’s recordings will be played for the jury. Or maybe they’ll just play all of Riccio’s secret recordings from beginning to end, starting with a recording of his kindergarten teacher on the toilet and ending with a recording of the jury listening to a recording of the jury listening to a recording of the jury listening to a recording of the jury that Riccio recorded when the jury were listening to a recording of another recording Riccio had recorded in secret earlier.

Great, we’ve broken our brains. Thanks a lot, OJ Simpson.

That can be said for the first 15 episodes of X-Factor as we all wonder why a fat lass from Wigan who sounds like she’s singing through her nostril thinks she can win.

Some people, however, get past cocky comments from judges like Simon Cowell and go on to make a decent living, before descending in to the world of Big Issue selling – just give Leona Lewis another 18 months.

It was the great old days though, when manufactured singers were poached from the Mickey Mouse Club. Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera have both left the iron fist of Disney to lighten up our lives.

But no-one has done this more so than Britney Spears, whose early glittering career really has gone up shit creek without a paddle. Now, leaked video footage from a Las Vegas gig captures Britney’s “live vocal” not sounding too peachy.

Shock! Horror! Gasp! Panic! Noooooooooooo! Sometimes pop pickers, the people on stage don’t actually sing live. We know that may be a bitter pill to swallow, but we haven’t needed rehab treatment to console ourselves.

The usual excuse is that they have to mime due to performers not being able to dance and sing at the same time. We can usually cope fine with doing both – if dancing is classed as rolling around on the floor, that is. That would mean we were incredible – just check us out after a trip to the boozer.

Ebaumsworld.com claim to have the footage of Britney Spears performing in the days before she got all icky and pregnant, shaved off her hair, battered people with umbrellas and did the lesbian thing with Madonna.

Before the time that she turned out to be such a good influence on her sister Jamie-Lynn, who then decided to open up her legs and let underage loving commence. Aww, the beauty of child birth and magazine deals.

Recorded by a more than likely disgruntled soundman, this clip shows a shocking recording of Britney miming along to her songs. Because it was done in America, we assume that some moron will sue her now due to it not being live.

Listen/watch it here.