Recent discovery of the extended Lyman alpha sources, the so-called<br />
Ly-alpha blobs, ignites harsh debates on their origins: what powers<br />
their LyA emission over ~100 kpc scale, AGN vs. cooling radiation<br />
(http://tinyurl.com/NYTimes-blob)?<br />
However, despite this intense interest, even their basic properties,<br />
e.g., number density and environment, are poorly constrained.<br />
From our ultra-wide narrow-band imaging surveys with Steward Bok 2.3m<br />
and NOAO\/s 4m telescopes, we find that blobs are extremely rare and<br />
strongly clustered populations implying that they may be precursors of<br />
today\/s rich cluster galaxies.<br />
Furthermore, different studies (using the same data) often lead to the<br />
contradictory conclusions on the kinematics of surrounding gas. I will<br />
discuss our recent kinematic studies using the Magellan/MagE and the<br />
VLT/SINFONI to distinguish the infall vs outflow kinematics in the blobs.