Now that the weekend is here, we have a bit of free time to unwind and catch up on the more interesting stories of the week. This roundup of 10 offbeat stories focuses on the bizarre, the novel, and the downright unexpected, giving you a fresh break from the usual headlines.
10 Offbeat Stories To Brighten Your Weekend
10 Giant Ice Spikes On Europa
Future missions to Jupiter’s icy moon just got a frosty twist, thanks to a fresh study in Nature Geoscience. Scientists from Cardiff University argue that Europa’s surface could be riddled with towering, jagged ice formations they’ve dubbed “ice spikes.”
These formations would be the extraterrestrial cousins of Earth’s penitentes—sharp, blade‑like ice sculptures that develop in cold, dry places like the high Andes. The difference? While Earthly penitentes top out at about 5 metres (16 ft), Europa’s could stretch up to a staggering 15 metres (50 ft).
We haven’t actually seen these spires yet, but the upcoming Europa Clipper mission—scheduled for launch between 2022 and 2025—should give us a close‑up look and either confirm or debunk their existence.
9 Fat, Furry, And Fabulous
Katmai National Park’s annual Fat Bear Week has crowned a new champion: a plump female known as 409 Beadnose, who out‑shined the competition to claim the title of the most bodacious bear of the season.
During this time of year, Alaskan brown bears gorge on salmon to bulk up for winter, often adding 130 kg (285 lb) or more. Over the past four years, Katmai has turned the contest into a Facebook‑driven showdown, pitting two bears against each other in a single‑round elimination where fans cast votes.
Beadnose bested the two‑time favorite 480 Otis in the opening round and then bested the heavyweight 747—nicknamed the “jelly‑bellied jumbo jet” and the “Macy’s Thanksgiving parade balloon”—in the finals. Though she first won back in 2015, a stint with two cubs in 2016 kept her from dominating until now, when the cubs have grown up and left her free to pack on the blubber.
8 Time Travel Tricks Your Brain
Researchers at Caltech have cooked up two mind‑bending illusions that showcase a phenomenon called postdiction—where a later stimulus retroactively reshapes how we perceive an earlier event.
The trick works by delivering a rapid series of visual flashes and auditory beeps in under a fifth of a second. The brain, bombarded with conflicting, noisy information, fills in the gaps using inference, effectively creating a perception that never truly occurred.The first illusion, dubbed the Rabbit Illusion, can be tried at home: stare at a central cross while counting flashes paired with beeps. Most viewers report seeing three flashes, yet only two were actually presented; the brain invents the third flash by integrating the surrounding cues.
The second illusion, called the Invisible Rabbit, flips the script. Here three flashes are shown, but the middle one lacks a beep, prompting the brain to erase that flash from conscious awareness.
7 Where Is Voyager 2?
New data hint that the twin of the legendary Voyager 1 may soon follow its sibling into interstellar space. Voyager 2, launched in 1977 just 16 days before its counterpart, took a longer, more circuitous route that included fly‑bys of Uranus and Neptune.
Two of Voyager 2’s instruments have recorded a roughly five‑percent uptick in cosmic‑ray hits over the past month, a possible sign that the probe is approaching the heliopause—the outer edge of the Sun’s protective bubble.
Voyager 1 experienced a similar rise in cosmic rays in May 2012 before crossing into interstellar space. However, because Voyager 2 is navigating a different sector of the heliosphere and the Sun’s 11‑year activity cycle varies, this spike alone doesn’t guarantee an imminent crossing.
6 Geyser Garbage
Yellowstone’s Ear Spring geyser erupted with a spectacular blast that hurled water over 9 metres (30 ft) into the air, the most powerful eruption the feature has seen in six decades.
Along with the usual spray of water, rocks, and steam, the geyser disgorged a century‑old assortment of human trash: soda cans, cigarette butts, roughly 100 coins, a massive cement chunk, and even a baby pacifier dating back to the 1930s.
Geologists note that the surge in activity is a normal thermal fluctuation on Geyser Hill and bears no link to the dormant supervolcano beneath Yellowstone. Park officials have deemed the recovered items “clearly historic,” planning to catalogue and archive them, while urging visitors not to treat the geyser as a trash can.
5 Cops And Bank Robbers
Armed officers in Birmingham raced to a NatWest branch after a passerby reported a possible robbery, only to discover that the staff were engaged in a game of hide‑and‑seek.
Someone walking past the bank on St. Philip’s Place saw employees ducking under desks and hiding, prompting an immediate police response. When the officers entered, they found the “robbery” was a false alarm—staff were simply playing a team‑building hide‑and‑seek exercise.
Both NatWest and the Birmingham Police issued statements confirming the misunderstanding and said NatWest would remind its staff to avoid such pranks in the future.
4 AI Teaches Itself To Discriminate
Amazon abandoned an AI‑driven recruitment tool after discovering it had learned to favor male candidates over women.
The project, which began in 2014, aimed to automate hiring by scoring resumes on a five‑star scale. Developers fed the algorithm a decade‑long database of Amazon résumés, which skewed heavily male, unintentionally teaching the AI to associate success with men.
Even after attempts to strip gender‑biased terms like “women’s” from the data, the system continued to devise new ways to penalise female applicants. Concluding the bias could not be fully eradicated, Amazon scrapped the tool, noting it had never been used in real hiring decisions.
3 Can You Hear Me Now?
A gecko caused a cascade of mysterious “butt‑dial” calls from a Hawaiian seal hospital, leaving staff bewildered by a series of silent phone rings.
Dr. Claire Simeone, director of the Ke Kai Ola seal hospital, received a puzzling call with no one on the line. After nine more silent rings, she rushed to the facility, fearing an emergency, only to discover the source: a gecko perched on a handset, unintentionally pressing the phone’s keypad with its foot.
The reptile was gently relocated outdoors, where it settled on a plant. Phone‑company technicians later confirmed a broken line wasn’t to blame; the gecko’s accidental foot‑dialing was the true culprit.
2 Do Tigers Love Calvin Klein?
In Pandharkawada, India, authorities are battling a ferocious tigress blamed for up to 13 deaths over two years, and they’ve turned to an unlikely lure: Calvin Klein’s Obsession for Men.
The fragrance contains civetone, a scent derived from African civet that mimics a natural pheromone. Wildlife experts hypothesise that the perfume’s smoky aroma could attract the tiger, drawing on prior successes where jaguars in the Bronx Zoo responded positively to the same scent.
Previous field trials have used the perfume to bait jaguars and even a leopard in Karnataka, India, by spraying it on branches near camera traps. Whether the same tactic will work on the elusive tigress remains to be seen.
1 To Shreds, You Say?
A newly unveiled Banksy artwork was shredded moments after fetching over £1 million at a London auction.
Sotheby’s sold the piece for £1,042,000, but as the hammer fell, an alarm blared and the canvas slipped into a hidden shredder, tearing itself in half. The artist posted a photo of the shocked crowd on Instagram, captioning it “Going, going, gone…”.
Pest Control, the agency representing Banksy, confirmed the work’s title as Love Is in the Bin. Sotheby’s noted this was the first instance of a work being created live during an auction, and the anonymous European buyer said they would still complete the purchase, now owning a piece of art history.