Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech After spending two and half years pondering a “golden orb” found at the bottom of the ocean, scientists have finally figured out what in the thundering typhoons it actually is. The aureate object looked like some sort of alien relic when it was first discovered clinging to a rock over two miles underwater in the Gulf of Alaska, before collapsing into a blob resembling molten leafs of gold when it was recovered. Now, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Smithsonian Institution reveal that the baffling object is a remnant of what was once a giant anemone — though it took considerable detective work to reach that conclusion. “This turned into a special case that required focused efforts and expertise of several different individuals,” said Allen Collins, a zoologist and director of NOAA Fisheries’ National Systematics Laboratory, in a statement. “This was a complex mystery that required morphological, genetic, deep-sea and bioinformatics expertise to solve.” …