It looks like a stalagmite of some kind. Have you checked directly above wherever the cup is stored for eldritch stains / cracks in the fabric of space time / slime moulds?
You can get ice pillars like that on ponds which are suitably shaped. It depends on a standing wave making a ickle peak where ice forms and slowly pushes earlier ice upwards. I suggest you have the same effect from a saturated sugar solution (possibly with the help of some bacteria or biscuit crumb)
Slug penis. Slugs dissolve slowly in tea, and their genital organs are the last to go, like the Cheshire Cat. But it would take a very big slug to leave one that size.
I am going to follow that link. But first I will cry "Why did I have to follow that link?" to save time later. Am intrigued to find out whether Cheshire slug penii are real or something out of my imaginings...
It's fascinating, but the "related videos" thing (via the echidna (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr_cn66sYc8)) can lead to hours of boggling at bizarrenesses like walrus autofellatio (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ros73m7xBRA).
It looks like an ice spike to me. Perhaps whatever it is made of dried from the outside inwards, forming a tacky film first. As the film contracted through evaporation it forced the wetter innards up through a weak point in the film, gradually forming a spike.
Did someone have lemon tea? Is the spike made of sugar and pectin?
I believe it was Darjeeling tea (I neither made nor drank it myself).
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diziet (from livejournal.com)2011-05-24 11:51 am (UTC)(link)
Hrm, reading about ice spikes I think: there was a flat patch of this gooey stuff stuck to the bottom of the mug. When the tea was poured, an ice-spike-like mechanism produced the tea spike.
Pressure would come from the increase in volume of subsurface goo as it heats up (or perhaps trapped air). I conjecture that the goo has a tendency to set when exposed to hot water: so a film of set goo forms over the top, and still-liquid goo which escapes out of a small hole would make a spike as it is congealed by the hot tea. Eventually the whole thing would set.
diziet (from livejournal.com)2011-05-24 11:42 am (UTC)(link)
The tea tasted fine. It was black and unsweetened. No-one tasted the weird spike. The person who made the tea swears the spike wasn't there when they put the tea bag into the cup and poured the water.
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It depends on a standing wave making a ickle peak where ice forms and slowly pushes earlier ice upwards.
I suggest you have the same effect from a saturated sugar solution (possibly with the help of some bacteria or biscuit crumb)
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*rolls dice* I think I get a +1 because I'm so much bigger than it?
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Did someone have lemon tea? Is the spike made of sugar and pectin?
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Pressure would come from the increase in volume of subsurface goo as it heats up (or perhaps trapped air). I conjecture that the goo has a tendency to set when exposed to hot water: so a film of set goo forms over the top, and still-liquid goo which escapes out of a small hole would make a spike as it is congealed by the hot tea. Eventually the whole thing would set.
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