Spanish Ice: Mystery Or Prank?

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Spain's great ice mystery is beginning to look like a prank.

Around 30 chunks of ice are said to have dropped from the sky since Jan. 8, some the size of basketballs, often in gloriously sunny weather, and just about every Spanish region has taken a hit.

The precipitation has picked up so much in the past few days that scientists said Wednesday they had collected enough samples and would not accept any more.

The Superior Council for Scientific Research urged people who find suspect frozen matter to double-wrap it in plastic and keep it in a refrigerator. The council is conducting chemical analyses and has promised to report initial findings on Friday.

In the meantime, chemists in Valencia did some checking of their own. They say they don't know what the chunks are, but they know what they are not.

They are not human waste expelled from airplanes, as had been speculated, because there is no evidence of microorganisms that would be present in urine, the University of Valencia team said.

They found that a sample collected Saturday in the town of Meliana contained sodium chloride, or table salt, and gypsum, which is chalk. Both are very earthly, which weakens another popular argument -- that the chunks may come from the tail of a comet.

But scientists quoted in newspapers say there are several puzzling things about the chunks. First, a chunk of ice falling from a plane would smash into many pieces, but the ones found so far have been intact.

Also, if this were a natural phenomenon, the size of the ice chunks should vary. But most have been the size of basketballs.

Then there is the exponential increase in recent days -- 20 chunks of ice found on Tuesday alone. At least half a dozen were quickly proven to be practical jokes -- including a seven-pound block with perfectly sharp edges

-- Notforlong (Fsur@aol.com), January 19, 2000

Answers

this is a scream. i love it. they notice big chunks of ice falling from the sky but no one notices the contrails!! maybe the ice is the result of the contrails or........is god trying to tell us something? or was that balls of suphur? :-)

-- tt (cuddluppy@aol.com), January 19, 2000.

sulphur!

-- tt (cuddluppy@aol.com), January 19, 2000.

GREAT BALLS OF FIRE ... or whatever they are! ??? What is the world coming to??? And WHY cannot our civil authorities find the terrorists that are responsible for this outrage??? Is this perhaps some 21st century "Zorro", who delights in taunting the good citizens with great balls of ... whatever.

For the record: should the substance turn out to be a form of MUD, I would like to make it clear that I am NOT the culprit. (Gawd!)

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.cum), January 19, 2000.

KoS, wanna ice wrestle?

-- justme (justme@myhouse.com), January 19, 2000.

Space Balls. Simply Space Balls. These are real. Chemtrails are an illusionary phenomenon of the dillusionary trometron.

-- Rob (maxovrdrv51@hotmail.com), January 19, 2000.

OK, I suppose it would be easy enough to determine if the ice came from waste holding tanks so I'll accept that's out. I flat out don't believe the ice originated in space (from comets or whatever). There's no way it would reach the ground before it vaporized from the heat of entering the Earth's atmosphere. Even if it didn't enter the atmosphere at typical cometary velocities and didn't vaporize it would still leave a fairly good sized crater and you certainly wouldn't recover the ice chunk intact.

Now a prank, that I can believe and there'd have to be quiet a few people in on it too for the number of strikes that have been reported. Hasn't anyone noticed any passing planes? The stuff ain't gonna just float around up there.

I think His Majesty should come clean here. There plainly has to be involvement on the part of the government for a prank of this magnitude to be pulled off.

........Alan.

-- A.T. Hagan (athagan@netscape.net), January 19, 2000.

Now, remember, everybody, how you have to do things when you mudwrestle the KOS. First, you have to wear your genuine porcupine suit, and second, the mud has to contain LOTS of salt. ;)

www.y2ksafeminnesota.com

-- MinnesotaSmith (y2ksafeminnesota@hotmail.com), January 19, 2000.

I thought we just wore mud.

-- justme (justme@myhouse.com), January 19, 2000.

It's more entertaining the way I suggested.

www.y2ksafeminnesota.com

-- MinnesotaSmith (y2ksafeminnesota@hotmail.com), January 19, 2000.

Hey, but then I'd have to skin a porcupine (or 12). What did the little critters ever do to deserve that? The salt WOULD be interesting though ;)

-- justme (justme@myhouse.com), January 19, 2000.

The frozen rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.

-- (HenryHiggins@Liza.Doolittle), January 19, 2000.

Hail the size of basketballs? A red moon? Let's see, I think if 4 guys on horses show up, we're done for...

-- Gia (laureltree7@hotmail.com), January 19, 2000.

Gawd!!!

It is quite clear this entire series of ballacious incidents is becoming a joke to the people of this forum. One can barely begin to express the overpowering sense of dread that has become commonplace in Spain, not knowing from one moment to the next if one will be "balled", as the expression has become.

Show a little compassion. Please?

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.cum), January 19, 2000.

Snowman eggs?

-- Sam (Wtrmkr52@aol.com), January 19, 2000.

Stuff like this has been happening for a long time. Charles Fort collected hundreds of reports of anomalies -- and published them in The Book of the Damned (1919), New Lands (1923), Lo (1931), and Wild Talents (1932).

I just now discovered that the full text of all these is available on the net ---

The Book of the Damned, New Lands, Lo, and Wild Talents

Brace yourself.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), January 20, 2000.

Could our illustrious Squirrel King somehow be involved in this caper?

-- Lurkess (Lurkess@Lurking.Net), January 20, 2000.

I think it's terrorism, as in Basque-etballs!

Kook

-- Y2Kook (Y2Kook@usa.net), January 20, 2000.

You may be right Lukess. I suspect a nefarious plot between the Rodential Monarch and the Spanish Monarch. A climate of fear is being engendered for reasons as yet uknown.

We need the Men In Black to investigate this. They must act quickly before everyone in Spain has been balled. Anyone have the cell phone number for Tommy Lee Jones?

........Alan.

-- A.T. Hagan (athagan@netscape.net), January 20, 2000.

Yes, yes, go ahead ... make merriment and have fun regarding this calamatious occurrence that has befallen others. All who make light of this should be ashamed of themselves.

Lurkess: Do you like to mudwrestle?

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.cum), January 20, 2000.

If one of the ice-basketballs is found in the middle of a crop circle, then I'll worry.

-- brad (123@45.com), January 20, 2000.

TO: SQUIRREL CORPS
FROM: COMMANDANT, EUROPEAN DIVISION
SUBJECT: SW AREA BOMBING

OPERATIONS DISCOVERED STOP CEASE BOMBARDMENT OF FROZEN DROPPINGS COMMA DRIPPINGS COMMA AND ICE CUBES STOP FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS FORTHCOMING STOP

SIGNED

-- ROCKET J. SQUIRREL (OCSWED@FROSTBITE.FALLS), January 20, 2000.

Thank goodness the "oil for acorns" deal went through!

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.cum), January 20, 2000.

we can laugh but this is pretty freaky. if you look on the picture of the "ice ball", it is rounded. remember from science class how hail stones are formed (being tossed up in the air again and again by currents and adding additional moisture?) right? if this is giant hail--some wind up there!!!! we had a few ice balls from airplanes before in dc and i don't remember it being rounded and i think i remember it being darker in color.

Fair Use for education and research purposes.

http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/01/19/iceballs/index.html

Iceballs rain on Spain; scientists scratch heads January 19, 2000 Web posted at: 3:32 PM EST (2032 GMT)

MADRID, Spain -- Are they giant hail stones? Comet debris? Frozen airliner sewage?

Scientists are hoping chemical analysis will clear up the origin of some 15 basketball-sized chunks of ice that have fallen from the sky in southern Spain over the past 10 days.

No one has been injured so far, but one iceball smashed into a frozen car near Seville. Two others damaged rooftops elsewhere in Spain.

So far, experts have come up cold in their search for an explanation.

"The most surprised person of all by this phenomenon is me," said geologist Jesus Martinez Frias who is heading a team of Spanish scientists that has traveled over the country collecting and analyzing the blocks of ice, which weigh as much as 8 pounds. Scientists say they are focusing on three possibilities:

Ice that came loose from an airplane fuselage.

Some unusual weather conditions.

Stray ice from a passing comet.

In the past, falling blocks of ice have proven to be waste flushed out of passenger jets or pieces of comet tails. But Martinez said the current giant hail lacks the coloration of jet waste. And the chunks are too scattered and infrequent to have likely come from a comet.

Martinez said the balls should have been large enough while plummeting through the atmosphere to register on radar screens.

Scientists promised to shed some light on the mystery later in the week.

-- tt (cuddluppy@aol.com), January 20, 2000.