Michael Crichton called; he'd like his reality back

In a potentially excellent example of life imitating art, a Swedish salvage team has spotted a science fiction story at the bottom of the ocean.

Explorer Peter Lindberg, who has apparently been successful at finding expensive things under the ocean before, says he noticed an anomalous sonar return in about 300 feet of water between Sweden and Finland. It caught his attention for two reasons:

-The object is circular, and regular enough to appear non-natural

-The object appears to have left a trail of scars on the seabed, implying it hit at a shallow angle

Here's what the actual sonar picture looks like:

As a writer and lover of rockets, this is exciting. (although, as the title implies, someone else thought of this scenario first.) The Earth is mostly water and mostly unpopulated, so odds are that if an extraterrestrial ship crashed, it would land in water and no one would see it. It could literally be the most important discovery in the history of mankind.

The realist in me, however, knows this is a remote possibility. Just about every other explanation for the object--from a natural formation to a manmade object jettisoned from a ship--is more likely. And sadly, it would take a lot of cash to go down and check.

But for the time being, I'm going to enjoy the mystery. At the very least, it's refreshing to know that there are still interesting bits of our planet out there to discover.

*Yes, there are blog posts on Turkey coming. Patience, grasshoppers.