To help you end the week on a positive note, we have gathered into one list all the news that might lift your spirits. This is where you’ll find a nice mix of feel-good stories combined with significant achievements and tales of true togetherness. If you prefer something weird and wacky, check out the offbeat list.

This week, we learn that the world’s loneliest frog has found a girlfriend. A puppy has a miraculous survival, and a man’s life is saved by beer. There are a few potentially “game-changing” medical breakthroughs, an extreme feat of endurance, and a humbling act of forgiveness.

10 Courtroom Clemency

The victim of a DUI hit stunned the courtroom when she not only forgave her attacker but also asked for his help.

Three and a half years ago, Montreal woman Tina Adams went out for a jog and was hit by 22-year-old Jordan Taylor, who was drunk behind the wheel. Nineteen surgeries later, Tina was able to overcome the fractured spine, cracked skull, brain injury, and blood clots she suffered in the crash.

She may have survived, but Adams will deal with pain for the rest of her life. She can no longer become a police officer because of her injuries and may not be able to have children. In the years since the crash, Tina has traveled to schools to talk about her experience and to warn students of the dangers of drunk driving.

She surprised everyone when she asked Taylor to join her on these school talks during his sentencing hearing.^[1] Tina believes that having the guy who hit her there will have a huge impact on the students. She had thought about doing this for a while but wanted to wait until meeting him in court to see if he showed genuine remorse.

9 Romeo Finds His Juliet

A lonely male frog once thought to be the last of his kind finally has a partner after a decade of solitude.

Romeo is a Sehuencas water frog. Ten years ago, conservationists realized that the species was in trouble so they collected him from the wild to place him into a breeding program. However, they couldn’t find a female suitable for him. Romeo was left in isolation in a Bolivian aquarium.

Now he is no longer alone. A recent expedition into the wilderness of Bolivia turned up five new Sehuencas water frogs—three males and two females. One of them, named Juliet, will be placed with Romeo in the hopes that they will breed together. At the moment, all the new amphibians are still in quarantine.

Herpetologists are hoping that opposites will attract when the two finally meet. Their personalities seem to be antithetical to each other. While Romeo is calm, slow, and doesn’t move around a lot, Juliet is very active, swims constantly, and eats everything in sight.^[2]

8 The Chief And The Good Samaritan

Last Saturday, the Kansas City Chiefs scored a playoff victory over the Indianapolis Colts and made their way to the AFC Championship Game later today. However, things might have turned out differently were it not for a Good Samaritan who stopped to lend a helping hand.

Hours before the game was set to start at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, Chiefs offensive lineman Jeff Allen was stuck in the snow. He probably would have missed the match if Dave Cochran hadn’t pulled over in his truck and helped Allen move his vehicle.

As it later turned out, Cochran was homeless and living in his truck. However, that did not stop him from aiding other people, which he considered his “natural habit.” When he pulled over, he didn’t know he was dealing with a Kansas City Chiefs player. He saw someone with Texas plates on his car and figured that he probably wasn’t used to driving in snowy conditions.

Allen was keen to return the favor and took to Twitter the next day to reach out to Cochran. Within a few hours, he was able to contact his snowy savior and give him a couple of tickets to the AFC Championship Game. Cochran admitted that he was only expecting a “thank you” but that Allen’s gesture is “like a dream come true.”^[3]

7 A New Therapy

According to a new study published in the journal Cancer Cell, Swiss researchers from the University of Basel are working on a revolutionary new therapy which can change breast cancer cells into harmless fat cells.

Cancer cells can undergo a process called epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Normally, this is something that makes them incredibly dangerous as it allows them to spread to other types of cells in the body. However, scientists believe that the same mechanism can be used against them.^[4]

During an experiment, researchers injected female mice with an aggressive form of female breast cancer. When the cells started undergoing EMT, the scientists also injected an antidiabetic drug called rosiglitazone and a cancer inhibitor named trametinib.

The combined therapy not only turned the cancer cells into fat cells but also stopped them from proliferating. Moreover, lead author Gerhard Christofori believes that the treatment will have a shorter, easier path to human trials because the drugs involved are already approved.

6 50,000 Cures For Loneliness

With his birthday approaching, World War II navy veteran Duane Sherman was feeling a bit lonely. His daughter asked friends on Facebook if they could send him some well-wishes. He received over 50,000 letters.

At the moment, there are birthday cards, thank you notes, small gifts, and mementos filling postal bins stacked one on top of another all throughout Sherman’s home in Fullerton, California. And that only represents a fraction of the total. He had to store thousands of letters at a friend’s house, and many more bins are still waiting to be picked up at the post office.^[5]

He has received letters from all 50 states and 10 different countries. Some of the senders included the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Secretary of the Navy. The commander of the USS Cowpens even took the vet out to lunch while officers from the San Diego US Navy Sonar School paid him a visit to listen to his stories.

Sherman’s birthday was on December 30, and so far, he has gone through fewer than 2,000 letters. He is legally blind, so his daughter, Sue Morse, has to read them to him. It’s pretty safe to say that they will be busy for the foreseeable future.

5 How To Get Over A Case Of The Mondays

Tomorrow is Blue Monday, considered to be the most miserable day of the year. But is there any truth to this, and are there ways of getting through the day with a smile on your face?

Right off the bat, if you live in the southern hemisphere, you’re off the hook. The cold weather is one of the main factors which contribute to the misery.

The concept of “Blue Monday” came from UK psychologist Cliff Arnall in 2005. It usually falls on the third Monday of the year. Arnall claims to have developed an equation to determine the saddest day using factors such as weather, debt level, time passed since the holidays, and time passed since people broke their New Year’s resolutions.^[6]

The whole thing was actually devised for an ad campaign for vacation company Sky Travel. It has been regularly dismissed as pseudoscience. Even Arnall admitted that he never intended to make the day sound negative but to inspire people to take action.

Let’s say you are feeling down in the dumps. Even if Blue Monday is a myth, seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is real. If you want to lift your spirits, psychologists recommend a bit of exercise, a nice walk outside, and fun, challenging indoor activities.

A healthier diet rich in good fats and antioxidants can also help to prevent depression. There is even light therapy using special SAD lamps to make up for all that sunlight you’re missing during winter.

4 Puppy Drop Has Happy Ending

A tiny puppy miraculously survived a drop from the sky with no serious injuries after being abducted by a hawk.

Last Saturday, construction workers in Austin, Texas, responded to cries belonging to a Chihuahua pooch which weighed less than 0.5 kilograms (1 lb). Wondering how the dog got there in the first place, they looked up and spotted a hawk circling above. They realized that the raptor had picked up the puppy and dropped it from the air.

The workers took the dog to the Austin Animal Center where vets were surprised to discover that the animal had only mild injuries and no broken bones. The worst of the bunch were the puncture wounds caused by the hawk’s talons, but even those will heal up completely in due time. The puppy, now called Tony Hawk, is resting with his foster family and will find a permanent home in a few weeks.^[7]

3 A Game-Changing Transplant

Medical experts are hailing a new procedure for liver transplants as a “game-changer” which will halve the waiting list.

Right now, about a third of all donated livers never make it into a patient. At the same time, 20 percent of people in need of a new liver die on the waiting list. This is due to the normal storage method which uses ice. It causes the organ to deteriorate, and there is only a limited time to transplant it before it becomes unusable.

A new treatment uses normothermic perfusion machines to preserve the liver. They constantly pump the organ with oxygenated blood and nutrients at body temperature so that it can be stored for longer periods of time with no ill effects.^[8]

Moreover, the blood treatment can actually be used to repair livers which have been damaged during removal or have come from elderly or ill donors. Therefore, they allow doctors to use organs which otherwise would have been discarded.

2 A Shattering Performance

New mother Jasmin Paris won the Montane Spine Race along the Pennine Way in the UK, smashing the previous record by over 12 hours.

The 431-kilometer (268 mi) race is one of the most grueling endurance challenges in Europe. Runners go from Derbyshire to the Scottish border, spending around two-thirds of their trek in the dark.

They cover a lot of hilly terrain and have to climb over 13,000 meters (43,000 ft) in total. They have to carry their own kit and supplies and can’t have a support team or runner join them on the course. Competitors carry an emergency button in case they are no longer able to walk.

With a time of 83 hours, 12 minutes, and 23 seconds, Paris became the first woman to win the race and had the fastest time ever—by far. The previous record of 95 hours and 17 minutes was set in 2016 by Eoin Keith.

Just a few checkpoints are allowed during the race, and Paris slept for only three hours during the whole thing. She admitted that she had begun hallucinating by the last day. She saw animals appear out of nowhere and trees doing morning stretches.^[9]

1 Beer Saves Life

Beer can be good for you, and 48-year-old Vietnamese man Nguyen Van Nhat is proof of that. When he came into the hospital unconscious, suffering from methanol poisoning, doctors pumped him with 15 cans of beer and saved his life.

Methanol is a form of alcohol. But it is a very toxic one which is typically found in paints, thinners, cleaning products, and antifreeze rather than beverages. Commercial spirit manufacturers take extra steps to remove methanol from their products, although it can still be found in dangerous quantities in bootleg liquor.

The source of the methanol consumed by Nguyen Van Nhat is unknown, but he had over 1,000 times the recommended limit. Doctors knew that he would die if his liver processed all the methanol in his system. The liver converts the alcohol into formaldehyde which is then broken down into formic acid. Doctors were looking for a way to slow down the process, and they found it with beer.

Beer contains another type of alcohol called ethanol. It is the alcohol found in most consumer drinks in the world. Although it is still toxic, its effects are far milder. As it happens, the liver first processes ethanol and only afterward moves up to methanol.

Therefore, as long as there was beer in Nguyen Van Nhat’s system, his body would not be damaged by the methanol. Doctors transfused 15 cans worth of beer into the patient at a rate of a can per hour, thus giving the dialysis enough time to remove the methanol from his system.^[10]

One out of four humans will die due to a sexually transmitted disease. It’s something that we’ve all been taught to protect ourselves from, even if everyone isn’t as diligent as they should be.

However, while many sexually transmitted illnesses are commonly known to affect humans, we aren’t the only species on the planet that can contract them. From HIV to herpes to brucellosis, the animal kingdom has its own fair share of problems when it comes to sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

10 Papillomavirus

Some mammals of the sea are known for their vast intelligence and for saving humans from sharks. But they also have the ability to contract genital warts through papillomavirus. Most commonly found in Atlantic bottlenose dolphins, genital warts are caused for the same reason that STIs are seen in humans: unprotected sex.

Mammals are most likely to be hosts of STIs, and bottlenose dolphins are not an exception. Increased contaminants in the water have compromised dolphins’ immune systems, making them more likely to contract STIs. While this has become a problem for bottlenose dolphins, learning from them has helped humans because dolphins and humans have similar types of papillomaviruses.

This is beneficial because dolphins have contracted these infections—and the resulting genital warts. But they have not developed cancer, one of the main results for human women with HPV.

Though there isn’t an indication that genital warts have been spread from bottlenose dolphins to humans, different types have been shown to exist and are being monitored by scientists.^[1]

9 Syphilis

Cute, fluffy, and able to multiply prodigiously, bunnies are adorable creatures that can often be found as pets. They are also carriers of an STI which is shared with humans: syphilis.

With almost 12 million new cases appearing each year in humans, understanding how syphilis spreads and what vaccines can aid in preventing and treating this infection will be beneficial for humans and rabbits. Treponema paraluiscuniculi, the bacteria associated with syphilis in rabbits, is different from that found in humans and cannot be spread from rabbit to human.

Still, a large population of rabbits has already contracted syphilis. According to researchers, syphilis in rabbits cannot be contracted in vitro. However, it can be spread from mother to child during pregnancy or at birth. In New Zealand, syphilis is a growing problem for humans and white rabbits.

In the late 20th century, Africa saw a syphilis epidemic in their baboon species, both in the wild and in captivity. The strain was different than the one contracted by humans but spread rapidly before treatment could be given in some cases.

However, the reason for the outbreak was unknown and the levels seen during this period have dropped dramatically. Only a few cases of baboons have tested positive for the infection since then.

As with humans, antibiotics can help to treat syphilis in animals if it’s caught in time.^[2]

8 Herpes

Herpes is not just a disease transmitted by humans. Many cases of herpes have been found in the animal kingdom—from elephants to reptiles to fish and even oysters. Herpes has a long history of infecting primates . . . and rabbits.

Rabbits can host the herpes virus and infect humans the same way that other primate species do: through bites or scratches. It can also be done the other way around. One study found that an owner gave his rabbit a human strain of herpes virus through saliva contact.

The herpes simplex virus in baboons varies from the kind seen in humans and can also be transmitted to humans from other primate species through a bite or scratch. Due to the differences in strains, the results can be deadly if not treated properly.

The types of herpes virus seen in various primates differ. For example, the one in baboons is similar to the kind in monkeys rather than chimpanzees or gorillas. Each primate species has its own strain of the herpes virus. Some researchers speculate that the herpes virus seen in humans is so similar to the chimpanzee virus because there was a common ancestor millions of years ago.

Baboons in Africa are battling a herpes strain that has scientists baffled. They are unsure where it originated or how it manages to spread so quickly. A total of 200 baboons have been infected. Although there have been no cases of human infection with this strain, the possibility of transmission may exist.^[3]

7 HIV

HIV is found in humans and other primate species. In fact, a recent discovery has shown that chimpanzees and gorillas may have been the original hosts of HIV.

As HIV spreads one million times faster than DNA can adapt, knowing where to look is key. Gorillas and humans share 98 percent of their DNA as well as the origins of HIV. Around 20 million people are affected by a type of HIV found in gorillas from Cameroon. Although HIV is usually spread from primate to primate through sexual intercourse, it’s speculated that the type given to humans came from eating infected meat.

HIV can be given to humans from other primate species through blood-to-blood contact, such as bites or ingesting infected meats. A study found that a specific group of chimpanzees in West Africa tested 90 percent positive for having a virus similar to the HIV found in humans and that it was only spreading.^[4]

While chimpanzees are known to have HIV, none of them demonstrate an illness similar to AIDS, which is an oddity as humans and chimpanzees share similar genetic structures.

6 Brucellosis

One of the most common sexually transmitted diseases in the animal kingdom is brucellosis (aka undulant fever), which can affect animals from livestock to those in the wild. Brucellosis is dangerous to animals due to its prevalence, but it also poses a threat to humans with possible long-term effects.

Brucellosis appears often in livestock and other domesticated animals as well as in deer. This disease is usually sexually transmitted among animals, but it can be shared between species by coming into contact with an infected animal or their infected meat.

Humans can contract brucellosis similarly—through ingestion of infected meat or cheese, contact with an infected animal, or drinking infected milk. While around 100–200 cases are seen yearly in humans, the results are rarely deadly. However, animals that aren’t treated quickly are not always as lucky. Symptoms range from the signature fever to vomiting, fatigue, diarrhea, and blurred vision.

Although few cases of brucellosis are spread from human to human through sexual contact, individuals who have had sexual intercourse before realizing they’ve contracted the illness are more likely to spread it to their partners. Studies have also found that when people are infected with brucellosis, medical follow-ups may be required to ensure that the virus hasn’t developed into a chronic condition.^[5]

5 Feline Immunodeficiency Virus

In 2017 alone, 940,000 humans died from AIDS-related illnesses. Although new treatments have become available, why AIDS affects humans and not other primate species is a question that is being asked. However, cats are not always so lucky.

Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) targets only cats and can be transmitted through bites and scratches, birth, and even semen. This virus comes from the same strain as HIV. However, we don’t know why FIV is the only non-primate virus to produce AIDS-related illnesses. With both HIV and FIV, the resulting AIDs-related illnesses can end in death.^[6]

While FIV does have a vaccine, HIV does not. This is because HIV goes through multiple mutations while FIV has only five known strains that result in AIDs-related illnesses.

4 IIV-6

Although this STI renders the host infertile, it also increases the host’s desire to mate. The infection known as IIV-6 affects cold-blooded insects, mostly crickets.

This sexually transmitted disease has become a particularly bad problem for cricket colonies. As the infected male hosts experience an increased need to mate, they spread the infection from partner to partner. The disease renders the infected males and females infertile, making it impossible for the crickets to continue breeding. The longer the host is infected, the higher the likelihood that the cricket will eventually die from this infection.

As IIV-6 is a DNA-based infection, the mutation of the disease is a possibility that many scientists are trying to stop. While the disease has existed for around a decade, the infection has increased in different colonies of crickets, spreading in a way that may start to affect other invertebrates.^[7]

3 Chlamydia

Chlamydia is an infection often seen in humans, affecting both women and men equally via sexual intercourse. Although over one million people have been diagnosed with chlamydia, it is one of the most easily treatable STIs seen in humans. For the animal kingdom, however, the disease is not as curable.

Chlamydia affects a variety of animals, from birds to mammals to reptiles. However, its strain is different than the one seen in humans, making it harder to treat. This has become a major problem in koalas, whose numbers are already dwindling due to hunting and loss of habitat.

Up to 50 percent of koalas under care in Queensland and New South Wales have tested positive for chlamydia. The rapid spread of the disease in koalas has become a major point of concern. It can quickly affect the mammals, but they don’t show any outward symptoms.^[8]

Once the symptoms progress to coughs and respiratory complications, chlamydia can result in infertility in koalas and even in death. Although the infection isn’t usually fatal, it can have serious negative effects on the koala’s health.

While the strain of chlamydia in koalas is quite different from that in humans, the possibility of a vaccine for koalas can be helpful for the development of a model to vaccinate humans.

This is especially crucial because chlamydia can spread from birds to humans in addition to human-to-human transmission. When the infection is spread from bird to cat, it mutates and turns into a feline-specific version.

This also happens when humans come into contact with infected birds. The specific infection is called psittacosis. Rare occurrences of bird to cat to human transmission have also been found.

2 Venereal Tumors

Although humans don’t “catch” cancer from one another, the ability to sexually transmit cancer does occur in the animal kingdom. Mammals are the most vulnerable to venereal tumors. Currently, the number of Tasmanian devils is dwindling due to the rapid rise in venereal tumors that have spread during mating.

Tasmanian devil facial tumor disease (DFTD) has been affecting these creatures for 20 years. It happens when Tasmanian devils bite one another during mating, resulting in cancerous facial tumors which have killed off almost 95 percent of the population since 1996.

As scientists tried to develop a vaccine to combat this, a second strain appeared. These two strains are two of the four transmissible cancers, three of which are transmitted through sexual intercourse in the animal kingdom.

The third venereal tumor is found in dogs, affecting both males and females equally and occurring naturally. Although HPV can lead to cancer in human women if not treated, canine transmissible venereal tumor (aka CTVT or Sticker’s sarcoma) is a cancer that is passed between dogs only. It has not mutated to affect humans or other animals.^[9]

CTVT has developed a way to adapt dogs’ genes to survive in almost a parasitic form. Even though this disease has several mutations, each variation includes the same gene from the original dog that was first infected. CTVT can be treated with chemotherapy.

1 Gonorrhea

Many people have speculated as to how gonorrhea, one of the oldest and most rampant STIs, came to be shared by cows and humans. One of the most prominent and unsettling theories focuses on an interspecies relationship that might be plausible but is more unnerving than anything else.

Due to the nature of gonorrhea, it’s unlikely that humans would have contracted the illness by eating infected meat. Cows aren’t the only animals affected by gonorrhea, either. Sheep, dogs, and even chimpanzees are susceptible to contracting gonorrhea.^[10]

However, with millions of people worldwide diagnosed with gonorrhea each year, understanding the illness is important for developing vaccines. Due to its adaptability and means to cross species, gonorrhea has been a difficult disease to fight.

With more antibiotics fed to sheep, pigs, and cows, the various strains of the disease have also become resistant to vaccines that are being created. Gonorrhea can mutate and adapt, which makes it harder to treat in both humans and animals. In turn, this can create a larger outbreak.

Comets go missing. Yes, we know that sounds weird. Comets are huge and have distinctive tails, so they tend to stand out. And it isn’t like they can be stolen by aliens, or something. Nevertheless, sometimes they just disappear.

Missing comets are a puzzle to astronomers. Most of the time, they suspect the comet broke apart or was flung out of our solar system when it got too close to a planet. Jupiter is very guilty of this. However, it’s not exactly easy to get a definitive answer. For all we know, the comet might even be around but could not be observed for certain reasons. Some comets have even disappeared, only to reappear and disappear again.

10 Great Comet Of 1264

The Great Comet of 1264 appeared over the skies between July and October 1264. It was visible throughout the day but was most visible just before the Sun rose in the early mornings. It also arrived at a time when comets were viewed as bad omens.

At the time, people believed comets were sent by supernatural beings and could cause deaths, floods, and diseases. The superstition was reinforced when Pope Urban IV became ill around the time the comet first appeared. He died on October 3, 1264, the last day the comet was observed. People said the comet killed the pope.

A similarly bright comet mysteriously appeared in 1556 and was appropriately called the Great Comet of 1556. In 1778, astronomer Guy Pingre claimed the comets of 1264 and 1556 were the same one. He surmised that it returned every 292 years and predicted it would return again in 1848. The comet did not return.

If we were to go by Pingre’s calculations, the comet should return in 2140. However, there is no evidence that this will happen. This means this entry could contain two missing comets.^[1]

9 Biela’s Comet

Biela’s Comet was discovered by Jacques Leibax Montaigne on March 8, 1772. It was rediscovered by Jean-Louis Pons in 1805 and Wilhelm von Biela in 1826. Pons did not realize the comet had been observed earlier, but Biela did when he determined it had the same orbit as the comets recorded by Montaigne and Pons.

Biela’s Comet returned in 1832, 1846, and 1852 before disappearing. It remains unclear whether it broke up or another celestial body altered its orbit. However, most astronomers believe it broke apart. Another known comet, Comet NEAT (207P/NEAT) was even suspected to be one of its fragments.

Author Mel Waskin claimed Biela’s Comet broke up. In his book, Mrs. O’Leary’s Comet: Cosmic Causes of the Great Chicago Fire, Waskin claimed Biela’s comet broke up into two smaller comets in 1845. Astronomers continued to track one piece, while the other later crashed into the Earth in 1871. He claimed the impact caused several fires, such as the Great Chicago Fire and the fires of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and Manistee, Michigan, which all occurred on October 8, 1871.^[2]

8 Caesar’s Comet

The mysterious Caesar’s Comet is possibly the brightest comet ever. It appeared in 44 BC and was widely observed and recorded before disappearing. The comet is named after the famous Roman general and statesman Julius Caesar, who was assassinated on March 15 the same year.

Caesar’s Comet appeared in July, four months after Caesar’s death. The Romans were holding the Ludi Victoriae Caesaris games in honor of Caesar at the time the comet appeared. It was very bright and clearly visible during the day. And it remained visible for seven days before disappearing.

People claimed the comet was the soul of Julius Caesar. These assertions were not surprising, since Caesar himself used to claim he was a god. His family also claimed to be descendants of Aeneus, who supposedly founded Rome, and Venus, a goddess.^[3]

Nevertheless, 44 BC was the only time we ever saw Caesar’s Comet. It is suspected to be a nonperiodic comet, as in one that does not orbit the Sun. This means that it might never return again. Others think it could have broken into smaller parts.

7 Brorsen’s Comet

Brorsen’s Comet (aka 5D/Brorsen) was discovered by Theodor Brorsen on February 26, 1846. It remained visible until April 22, when it finally traveled too far to be observed. Johann Franz Encke claimed it returned every 3.44 years, but it was later agreed to be around 5.5 years.

Brorsen’s Comet was expected to return in September 1851, but it never did. However, it returned in March 1857, when it was rediscovered by Karl Christian Bruhns. Bruhns did not realize he had found the missing comet until it was established that his discovery was not a new comet but the previously lost Brorsen’s Comet.

The comet returned again in 1862 but was not observed. It showed up in 1868 and was spotted. Meanwhile, astronomers had already noticed that the comet always flew too close to Jupiter, which was altering its orbit. It was supposed to return in 1874 but appeared a year earlier because the gas giant shortened its orbit.

Brorsen’s Comet came back around in 1879, the last time it was ever seen. It was supposed to return in 1884, 1895, 1901, and other subsequent years but never did. Astronomers extensively searched for it in 1973, when it was expected to make another flyby. It was never found and remains missing.^[4]

6 Comet Lexell

Comet Lexell was 2.2 million kilometers from the Earth at its closest, making it the nearest any comet has ever come to our planet. It appeared in 1770 and was first observed by Charles Messier. However, it got its name after Anders Johan Lexell calculated its orbit and determined that it ended somewhere around Jupiter. He said the comet would return every five and a half years.

Comet Lexell was expected to return in 1776, but it never did. Nor did it show up ever again. Urbain Le Verrier determined the comet’s orbit had been altered when it strayed too close to Jupiter. Jupiter either increased its orbit, which means it could return sometime in the future, or flung it away from our solar system.^[5]

5 Great Daylight Comet Of 1910

In January 1910, as anxious skygazers awaited the arrival of the famous Halley’s Comet, another one suddenly appeared in the sky. This comet, which was aptly called the Great Daylight Comet of 1910, was so bright that it was clearly visible in the daytime sky. It was five times brighter than Venus.

Some miners in South Africa were believed to have first spotted the comet on January 12. The comet soon appeared over the US, where smart entrepreneurs organized “comet-watching parties” to allow curious people observe it with a telescope. The comet remained visible until the first weeks of February and has not been seen ever since.

Interestingly, the appearance of the Great Daylight Comet of 1910 outshone Halley’s Comet, which arrived few months later. When Halley’s Comet returned in 1985–1986, some people who claimed to have seen it when it arrived in 1910 ended up describing Great Daylight Comet.^[6]

4 Comet Perrine-Mrkos

Comet Perrine-Mrkos was discovered by Charles Dillon Perrine on December 9, 1896. Perrine did not realize he had found a new comet. He thought it was part of the lost Biela’s Comet, which was believed to have broken up. He calculated that the comet would return in 1903, but it was not observed.

It was spotted again in 1909 but not seen afterward for some time. Comet Perrine-Mrkos was supposed to return in 1916, but its visibility would have been so poor that nobody bothered to look for it. It was expected to return again in 1922 and 1929 but was not seen in either year.

The comet was finally observed again on October 19, 1955, when it was spotted by Antonin Mrkos. Mrkos thought it was a new comet or part of the supposedly fragmented Biela’s Comet. However, Leland E. Cunningham deduced that it was neither a new comet nor part of Biela’s Comet. It was the lost comet earlier discovered by Perrine.

Astronomers noticed that the orbit of Comet Perrine-Mrkos had been altered at the time it was rediscovered by Mrkos. This was because it often traveled close to Jupiter, which we’ve already fingered for flinging comets out of our solar system. Nevertheless, the comet was visible in the sky until February 1956.

Afterward, the comet was declared missing again until it reappeared in 1961 and 1968. It was declared missing yet again when it did not reappear in 1975.^[7]

3 Comet Boethin

Comet Boethin was discovered by Reverend Leo Boethin on January 4, 1975. Astronomers calculated its orbit and determined that it would return in 11 years. Their calculations proved correct when the comet showed up in January 1986, 11 years later. It was observed by several astronomers until March 1.

Comet Boethin was expected to return again in April 1997, but it never did. If it did, it was not observed. However, astronomers finally agreed it was missing when it did not return in December 2008.

NASA was so sure that the comet was coming that at one point, they planned to send their Deep Impact spacecraft to intercept it. NASA launched the spacecraft in 2005 and left it orbiting the Sun, expecting the arrival of Comet Boethin, which never showed up. It is suspected to have broken apart.^[8]

2 75D/Kohoutek

75D/Kohoutek was discovered by Lubos Kohoutek in February 1975. It is distinct from the more well-known Comet Kohoutek. Astronomers determined that 75D/Kohoutek would not have been visible from Earth if Jupiter had not altered its orbit on July 28, 1972.

75D/Kohoutek was determined to return roughly every seven years. It appeared in 1988 but was declared missing when it did not return in 1994. It did not appear in 2000, 2007, or 2014, either. Astronomers will dump the missing label if the comet reappears in March 2021.^[9]

1 83D/Russell

83D/Russell (formerly 83P/Russel) was discovered by Kenneth S. Russell on June 16, 1979, and remained visible until August 14. M.P. Candy calculated its orbit and determined it would return every 7.43 years. Daniel W.E. Green countered this when he calculated that the comet to return in 6.13 years.

Green was right. 83D/Russell returned again in April 1985 and was first observed by J. Gibson on April 9. It was seen until June 17. Afterward, the comet strayed too close to Jupiter. The gravitational force of the planet altered its orbit, increasing its perihelion distance from 1.61 to 2.18 astronomical units.

At the time, astronomers predicted the alteration could render the comet missing. In fact, that was also the last time the comet was seen. The comet was expected to return in 1991 and 1998, but the conditions did not favor its observation. 2006 was expected to have better conditions, but 83D/Russell wasn’t seen, so it’s missing.^[10]

Except for scientists who experiment on lab rats, many people scream at the sight of these creatures or try to kill them. The blanket perception is that rats are useless vermin. However, the truth is more unusual.

These highly intelligent mammals have jobs in the military and medical sectors. They rescue their fellow rats and communicate over the Internet. They even regret things and teach their kids about dangers. In the end, they may survive Armageddon and dominate the world.

10 Distinct City Groups

During a 2018 study, four cities were chosen and 150 rats were captured from each. They came from Vancouver, New York, New Orleans, and Salvador, a city in Brazil. Each rat’s tissue sample was analyzed for 15,000 genetic markers.

The results confirmed a theory from the previous year when it became clear that a commercial district in Manhattan divided most of New York’s rats. The suspicion that the separation created two genetically distinct groups was proved when the 2018 study confirmed “uptown” and “downtown” rats.^[1]

The three other cities also showed DNA divides. In New Orleans, rats from the French Quarter and the Lower Ninth Ward were genetically distinct. They were separated by a canal. A valley split Salvador rats into a northern and a southern group. A Vancouver pocket was isolated by highways.

The report also found that rats from smaller areas preferred their own. Especially in New York and New Orleans, rats with related DNA were more apparent within 460 meters (1,500 ft) of one another.

9 Males Without Y Chromosomes

In mammals, gender is determined by the X and Y chromosomes. Offspring inherit one from each parent. An XX combination creates a female, and XY is needed for a male.

However, Japan’s Amami spiny rat is the exception. The species has no Y, and yet some are born as fully functional males. Even more odd, both genders only have a single X chromosome.^[2]

A 2017 study took stem cells from a female rat’s tail and injected them into mouse embryos. Female mice carried these to term, and the pups revealed an interesting clue. The spiny rat’s stem cells had adapted to both ovaries and testes. The latter was a world first.

In the past, sperm could not be grown from female stem cells due to a lack of the male Y chromosome. However, spiny cells proved exceptionally flexible and sensed when they were in ovaries or testes.

Researchers also found that the male rats kept their other male sex genes. When the Y was mysteriously erased, these jumped to other parts of the genome and the remaining X.

8 They Inherit Fear

A 2014 experiment showed that rats taught their offspring about danger. Scientists first conditioned adult females to dread the scent of peppermint. Every time the aroma was released into the rat’s enclosure, she received a mild electric shock.

The herb-fearing rats later became mothers, which initiated the second phase of the experiment. No more shocks were involved. But when the peppermint smell came, the adults stressed and their bodies released a certain smell.

The pups noticed both smells and their moms freaking out. Soon, they learned to fear peppermint, too, even though they were never shocked. They were simply taught by their mother’s behavior that this change in their environment was a danger.^[3]

They understood this lesson within a few days. Soon, the pups even feared peppermint without their mother’s presence. This infant perception of danger could be one of the things that make rats such a successful species.

7 Regretful Rodents

In 2014, researchers built a restaurant for rodents. This was to test if rats could feel regret. The “restaurant” was a circular enclosure with rooms. Each chamber dispensed food after a certain waiting period. The rats were trained to gauge the different waiting times from chimes.

Some rats were willing to wait an hour for their favorite dish. Less patient individuals decided on a shorter time and grabbed the next-best meal. Since they could not reverse their decisions, this left some room for regret.

Researchers found that rats which chose the worse deal often glanced back at the room they skipped (holding their favorite snack and longer waiting time). At that moment, brain scans revealed a curious thing.

As the animals looked back, their brains showed what researchers analyzed as “a representation of entering that restaurant—not of the food they missed.” This was the first evidence that animals other than humans could regret a choice.^[4]

6 Bomb Squad Rats

In Mozambique, being an African giant pouched rat can get you special training. These cat-sized critters can solve one of the country’s deadliest problems—land mines. When a young rat is interested in this career path, it enters a Belgian organization called Apopo. There, it receives nine months of training with lots of yummy food rewards until it can detect the scent of explosives.

Once ready, they go out into the field with mine-removal experts. When a pouched rat smells a mine, it scratches at the ground. This alerts its handler, who is at a safe distance.

The rats are in no danger—they are simply too light to trigger the mines. Additionally, they are so good at their jobs that they can clear an area in just 30 minutes. It would take experts three days to sweep the same place with metal detectors.^[5]

Mozambique was rigged with thousands of land mines during its 16-year civil war. Although the conflict ended in 1992, the explosives continued to injure and kill people. Thanks to a small army of rats, Mozambique will be land mine free.

5 They Could Rule The World

In the past, Earth experienced at least five mass extinctions. Most recently, the dinosaurs perished around 65 million years ago. This event allowed tiny mammals to take over the world.

In 2014, scientists held a thought experiment. They reviewed geological records, past extinctions, which species thrived, and how. The idea was to see which animals would likely survive the next great extinction and take over the world.^[6]

Drawing on the past, some clever calculations, and present species with Armageddon-resistant skills, the researchers identified the winner. Rats, sure, but no ordinary ones.

Mass extinctions have a way of beefing up the tiny underdog. Should rats emerge victorious after a global disaster, they could become massive in the absence of predators. Cats and pigs were also candidates, but the rodents had a proven history of surviving most environments and eradication programs. Humans did not make the cut.

4 Rats Detect Childhood TB

In 2016, tuberculosis (TB) killed 1.3 million people, including 130,000 children. TB is difficult to treat, but kids face an additional hazard. They cannot produce enough mucus and saliva to provide a proper sample. As a result, a child with TB has a 60–70 percent chance of testing negative. So, it appears as if the youngster does not have the disease when he actually does.

Doctors in Mozambique and Tanzania heard that other lung diseases often had distinctive smells, and this gave them an idea. Tuberculosis produces certain compounds which were used to train rats.^[7]

Traveling on motorbikes, the doctors collected samples from patients at local clinics. The rodents, African giant pouched rats, sniffed the samples to see how many they could identify as TB.

Normal tests on the same samples detected the disease in kids, but the rats found a large additional number that the doctors missed. The rate of positive identification jumped by nearly 40 percent. Although the animals’ accuracy dropped with adults, they still found more real TB cases than the usual tests.

3 Remote-Controlled Rats

Past studies have produced some impressive roborats. One study involved hooking up animals to a processor, and afterward, some could control a robotic arm with their thoughts.

In 2002, that experiment led to another unusual mix of computer and rodent—electrodes inside brains that steered remote-controlled rats. The animals received training in a weird way.

The electrodes rewarded them with pleasure. Within 10 sessions, they learned to follow directions. Researchers guided rats up ladders and trees and into dangerous areas—all by typing on a laptop. The animals performed correctly for up to an hour.

However, bioethics experts are not happy with the invasive implants and electronic control of another being’s will. Since the project was funded by DARPA, the US military’s research branch, some fear that this is the beginning of the militarization of nature. The researchers involved said that the roborats were created with search and rescue in mind.^[8]

2 They Have Empathy

Rats react to the emotions of other rodents. This is called emotional contagion. It is the same thing that sets off a group of small kids. One cries and the rest might start bawling, although they do not know why. Similarly, rats displayed pain or fear behavior when they sensed it in others.

In 2011, researchers wanted to see if rats had empathy. Emotional contagion could be viewed as a natural reaction, hinged on instinct, but empathy requires a more intelligent approach. The rat must recognize distress in another and then put aside its own fear to provide assistance.

To start with, pairs of rats were kept together for two weeks. This allowed them to bond. Eventually, one was locked inside a small transparent tube. At first, the free rat was cautious about the new development.

Before long, they repeatedly freed their trapped friends. (The tube could only be opened from the outside.) They ignored canisters that were empty or contained stuffed rats. When presented with containers holding tasty snacks and trapped rats, the free rats opened both types of containers and shared their snacks with their formerly trapped friends.^[9]

1 They Use The Internet

There are two rats that shared information over the Internet. One rodent lived in North Carolina and the other in Brazil. Scientists attached devices called brain-to-brain interfaces to the pair of rats, which allowed them to work together with the Internet as their link.

This achievement is remarkable. Although separated by thousands of miles, the rats shared sensory information and taught each other tricks. If one performed badly at a task, its partner appeared to change its behavior to help the other one succeed.

The rats received each other’s brain signals via tiny electrodes inside their skulls that changed neurological signals into an electronic version. In this manner, brain activity was swapped with a high level of success. They even collaborated on more complex tasks, proving that a direct, sophisticated link between brains was possible.

Near the end of the experiment in 2013, several rats on different continents were linked via the Internet. Despite transmission delays and noise, their brain activity still communicated with each other.^[10]

There’s no doubt about the connection between nerds and scientists. Often, the culture of one feeds the other. Perhaps it is because the phenomena of the natural and technological worlds become building blocks when creating fantastic fictional worlds.

However, it is not always the scientists who inspire nerd culture to provide the elements to create wonderful worlds of fantasy. Sometimes, the influence travels in the opposite direction and inspires scientists to examine fictional worlds to understand our own natural world.

Regardless of the direction from which ideas flow, an incredible symbiotic relationship exists between both spheres.

10 Moving Atoms

In September 1989, IBM physicist Don Eigler managed to arrange 35 Xenon atoms to spell out “IBM.” This amazing feat was made possible by a scanning tunneling microscope. Single atoms are arranged by using a sharp tip to move over a surface and release attractive and repulsive forces to pick up and put down the atoms.

Since then, physicists have managed to write the word for “atom” in Japanese Kanji, create the world’s smallest abacus, and leave notes for colleagues. The culmination of their work is depicted by manipulating atoms in the short film, “A Boy and His Atom,” which is more science than fiction.

While the real-world application of building on such a small scale has not been fully realized, it is predicted that the discoveries made with this technology will assist in developing life-changing nanotechnology.^[1]

9 Lucy

Perhaps one of the most iconic fossils in the world is that of Lucy the Australopithecus afarensis. Discovered in 1974 in Hadar, Ethiopia, by Donald Johanson and Tom Gray, Lucy is dated to have lived about 3.2 million years ago.

Her curved spine, bicondylar knees, and pelvic structure indicate that she was primarily bipedal. Thus, she was one of the oldest hominid ancestors at the time she was discovered.

What makes this discovery so nerdy, though?

After they initially found the remains, the team partied into the night. The popular Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” played throughout the night. Like all good stories, nobody knows exactly who decided to call her Lucy, but it was clear that the Beatles inspired the naming of one of the most famous human ancestors.^[2]

Although it may seem like a stretch to consider it nerdy to name a fossil after a song by the biggest pop band in history, I would consider Beatlemania to be an offshoot of “nerd.”

8 Sonic Hedgehog Gene

Scientists who discover genes are a little eccentric when it comes to naming them. The most popular may be the Sonic Hedgehog gene, which is responsible for many aspects of a human’s early development. This includes signaling the split of the brain into a left and right side and the split of the eye field so that we develop two separate eyes.

Sonic Hedgehog got its name from two scientists. In the early 1990s, Christiane Nsslein-Volhard first discovered the gene when she deactivated it in fruit flies. This caused a mutation resulting in the growth of small denticles that resembled hedgehog quills. The gene was simply named Hedgehog.^[3]

Three similar genes were later discovered. They were given the names Indian, Desert, and Sonic. While Indian and Desert are names of real species of hedgehog, Sonic came from researcher Robert Riddle. He was inspired by a promotional comic of Sonic the Hedgehog that his daughter had brought over from the UK before the video game was released.

Recently, some scientists have been trying to cut down on the silly names that researchers have been giving to genes. They want to be more professional when speaking to human patients. Although the gene in question is now officially known as SHH, most people still refer to it as Sonic Hedgehog.

7 William Gibson And The Internet

When we watch films or read books set in the future, we often laugh at how far off their vision can be. Take a look at Back to the Future‘s view of what 2015 would look like compared to what really happened during 2015. While predicting the future is often a crapshoot, many of the writings of William Gibson have been extremely accurate.

With his first novel, Neuromancer, written in the 1980s, Gibson was able to envision a world much like our current one in terms of the Internet and how computers have seeped into every aspect of our lives. Gibson is credited for creating the terms “cyberspace” and “computer virus” as well as inspiring the film series The Matrix.

Gibson downplayed many of his predictive abilities and insisted that his writings were focused on how people were living currently and following those trails to what they might evolve into. Despite his predictive powers and inspiration on the world of computer science, Gibson humorously points out that the major thing he never thought to include in his story was the prevalence of cell phones.^[4]

6 Cthulhu

H.P. Lovecraft was unable to attend college and enter the scientific community due to a childhood illness. However, like the cult of the tentacled cosmic entity Cthulhu that was bent on destruction and chaos, scientists have been spreading the influence of Cthulhu throughout the scientific world and beyond.

First, a spider in the redwoods of California was given the name Pimoa cthulhu. While the spider doesn’t exactly resemble the evil being, the discoverer G. Hormiga states that it was “named after H.P. Lovecraft’s mythological deity Cthulhu, akin to the powers of chaos.”

Additionally, microbes referred to as protists found in the guts of termites have been named Cthulhu macrofasciculumque and Cthylla microfasciculumque, an ode to the Great One and his secret daughter.^[5]

These microbes have been described by the researchers as having up to 20 flagella (tentacles) that they use to locomote like an octopus. They are responsible for breaking down the wood that termites eat into a sugar that the creatures can digest.

Extending past our world and into the far reaches of space, a region on dwarf planet Pluto was named after Cthulhu. The region is one of the darkest features on the planet, and that includes places named after evil Lord of the Rings creatures and the Mayan god of death.

5 The Lord Of The Rings Inspires Everything

Speaking of evil creatures from The Lord of the Rings, it’s time to talk about one of the most present forms of nerd culture in the scientific world. The Lord of the Rings is pervasive in almost every scientific discipline—from the taxonomy of creatures both extant and extinct to regions of planets and comets.

A software company named Palantir also works with the CIA and NSA. In case you’re wondering, Palantir refers to Middle Earth’s version of a crystal ball that allows the user to see anywhere in the world. Let that sink in.

Even more interesting, J.R.R. Tolkien’s influence has extended beyond scientists paying homage by naming discoveries after things from Middle Earth to actual scientific research based on Tolkien’s works. For instance, researchers have created climate models for Middle Earth and determined that the Shire, the home of the hobbits, is much like Lincolnshire or Leicestershire in the UK and that Mordor is similar to Los Angeles or West Texas.

Others have investigated the oxygen levels of Middle Earth to explore how men in that world could perform fantastic feats of athleticism, whether Frodo could survive a stabbing while wearing mithril armor, and the physical and mental disabilities of Gollum.^[6]

While these articles are somewhat tongue-in-cheek, real science was conducted to investigate these aspects of the story. However, the question remains: Why do scientists strive so hard to come up with scientific reasoning for Tolkien’s works?

It is because they are inspired by the depth that was put into these stories. Tolkien created languages, lineages, and geographies in his stories. That kind of attention to detail in world-building attracts and inspires scientific minds.

4 IBM Watson

IBM is known for creating interest in science and technology with their Grand Challenges. These challenges typically pit man versus machine in tests of intellectual prowess.

IBM previously had created Deep Blue, the computer responsible for defeating Grand Master Garry Kasparov at chess. Searching for their next Grand Challenge, IBM worker Charles Lickel looked to Ken Jennings’s record 74 wins on the quiz show Jeopardy.

Originally considered to be “too gimmicky,” the project developed from creating a system that could barely beat a five-year-old to winning against two of Jeopardy‘s legendary contestants in a three-day, head-to-head challenge.

Beyond simply answering questions, the system—named after the company’s founder, Thomas J. Watson—had to overcome the challenge of formulating questions from clues given on the show. To a human, the concept seems fairly straightforward. But for a machine, this is a precise and nuanced difference.

To accomplish this, IBM developed software called DeepQA that analyzed what was being asked and the information it was being given. The system would create multiple threads with likely answers. Based on the likelihood of being right, Watson would give the answer.

For Jeopardy, over 200 million pages of information were generated that Watson would comb through for answers. Back in 2011, when Watson demolished the other contestants with a lead of more than $50,000, Watson was the size of the entire room.

Currently, Watson is used for information sectors and can fit in the vegetable crisper of a refrigerator. With the supercomputer’s huge advancements in the past few decades and its proof of intellectual superiority, Ken Jennings said it best when he admitted, “I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.”^[7]

3 Scientific Studies From Interstellar

Films often require suspension of disbelief to some degree. Whether it is adding dramatic flair, creating wholly fictional worlds, or slightly changing the physics of reality to make a more compelling story, filmmakers are known to bend the truth a bit.

So it should raise some interest when astrophysicists and other scientists credit a film with being an accurate representation of reality. This makes Christopher Nolan’s movie Interstellar stand out among most other high-budget films.

To give the most accurate portrayal of black holes in real life, the special effects team Double Negative partnered with physicists such as Kip Thorne, who also participated in Carl Sagan’s film Contact.

While the filmmakers have admitted that some true features one would see in a black hole were toned down to reduce confusion, the results seen in the film are the most accurate depiction and have led to some interesting discoveries about the behavior and morphology of black holes. By studying the code used to create the visual effects in the film, physicists have published scientific papers detailing the behaviors of black holes.^[8]

2 James Cameron Reaching Deepest Point In Ocean

While Christopher Nolan’s film took us through the unexplored reaches of the final frontier, the work of James Cameron has helped science explore the unseen depths of our own planet.

In March 2012, James Cameron, director of some of the most iconic films in history (Titanic, Avatar, The Terminator) partnered with scientists to complete a solo descent into the deepest portion of the Mariana Trench known as Challenger Deep.

This was the first time since the 1960s that anyone had descended to these depths and the first time that anyone had done it solo. The purpose of the mission was to explore the deep unknowns of the planet and to possibly bring back any life found for research purposes.

So, how did the famous filmmaker manage to become the first and only person to ever reach the deepest part of the Mariana Trench? Cameron answered, “I sort of joke about this, but it’s more true than not that I made the movie because I wanted to do an expedition to the wreck of the Titanic, and I did explore it.”^[9]

For Cameron, there is no separation between explorer and storyteller. His blockbuster films are the ways he tells his stories about the inspiring majesty of nature that he has explored.

1 Cost Of Death Stars Destroys Empire

In what may be one of the most thorough accounts of “they did the math,” Zachary Feinstein took an in-depth look at the galactic economy and the potential catastrophe that destroying two death stars would have on the economy. Feinstein published his findings in 2015 in an article titled “It’s a Trap: Emperor Palpatine’s Poison Pill.”

He determined that the destruction of both death stars in the original Star Wars trilogy would have tragic economic consequences if the Rebel Alliance was not prepared for any kind of buyout.

Based on previous research, the materials and development (in 2012) would have cost a grand total of at least $419 quintillion. Although that’s a large number, Feinstein notes that the galactic economy surely is larger than our piddly US economy.

Then Feinstein goes on to develop a picture of how the galactic economy would have looked and the toll that destroying two death stars would have. The argument is that the empire would have taken out a government loan to build these hulking planet destroyers.^[10]

With the death of Emperor Palpatine, the destruction of both death stars, and the dissolution of the empire, the borrower would default on the $419 quintillion loan (without anyone to pay for it) and throw the economy into a huge deficit unless the Rebel Alliance would have planned for such a circumstance.

But as Feinstein notes, the Rebel Alliance probably had no such plans. As best explained by one of their highest-ranking members, the rogue-like Han Solo: “Never tell me the odds.”

+ The Time An Astronaut Called Into Car Talk

Car Talk was a radio show that aired between 1977 and 2012 and featured the Boston-accented brothers Tom and Ray Magliozzi. The show consisted of the brothers taking calls from people around the country asking about their car troubles.

The simple concept of the show eventually became comedic as the brothers argued and laughed about the strange experiences people would have with their cars. Perhaps one of the strangest calls on the long-running show came from John in Houston in 1997.

The twice that I’ve driven this thing off the line, when I first start it up, it starts great. It starts really, really well, and it runs incredibly rough for the first two minutes. This is one of those puzzlers. After the first two minutes, after this really rough ride, there’s kind of a jolt. And then it runs smooth for about six and a half minutes, and then at that point, the engine dies.^[11]

The caller informed them that he was talking about a government vehicle. The brothers weren’t easily fooled and soon found out that the caller was John Grunsfeld aboard the space shuttle Atlantis. “Not exactly our area of expertise,” the brothers concluded.

George enjoys reading, writing, and playing guitar. He likes writing about science.

Are we alone in the universe? Ever since humankind discovered the existence of other planets and solar systems, we have been wondering if we might be contacted by another intelligent species one day. International SETI science projects and amateur backyard astronomers alike have directed their telescopes to deep space to find transmissions that might have been sent by alien civilizations. The quest to find evidence of extraterrestrial life is so profoundly ingrained into our minds that it has sparked countless supposed eyewitness stories about unidentified flying objects and other weird phenomena.

There have been multiple occasions when scientists believed they might have discovered signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, only to notice that the findings were something else, ranging from a pulsar to a leaking microwave. Some electromagnetic wave transmissions and weird sightings have never gotten a definitive explanation. From actual scientific hypotheses to the most famous weird UFO theories, here are ten signs of extraterrestrial life that either turned out to be false alarms or still have no official explanation.

10 Martian Canals

One of the big astronomical misconceptions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the idea that canals existed on the surface of Mars.^[1] Some astronomers concluded that the only explanation for these canals was that they were built by an intelligent species for irrigation. American astronomer Percival Lowell published a trilogy of books explaining his theory about the intelligent design of the canals, and the press circulated the idea into public knowledge.

Debate about the existence of the structures and Martian life raged on until the early 20th century, when advancing technology proved the whole concept of the canals to be false. The canals were merely an optical illusion caused by the blurry telescopes of the time and the mind’s tendency to connect dots into lines.

9 The HD 164595 Signal

HD 164595, a star very similar to our Sun, rose to the headlines in 2016 when it came to knowledge that in 2015, a possible alien signal had been broadcast from its direction.^[2] The star is orbited by one planet that cannot sustain life, but it was hypothesized that the star might have more undetected planets orbiting it. The signal lasted for two seconds and was caught only once. Since it was so brief, its source was hard to pinpoint.

Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) investigated the signal to evaluate its possible alien origin. SETI concluded that it was probably caused by terrestrial interference, since it was only caught by one telescope. Its exact origin was never found out, but it most likely came from a satellite.

8 Kenneth Arnold

The world is full of unreliable eyewitness stories about flying saucers, but aviator and businessman Kenneth Arnolds’s UFO story was the first one to be widely reported in the media. In 1947, Arnold claimed that he had seen nine weird flying objects while he had been flying over Washington state. He described them moving like a saucer skipping on the surface of water, and the press quickly came up with the terms “flying saucer” and “flying disc,” as they misunderstood Arnold’s words and thought the flying objects were shaped like saucers.

The Air Force stated that Arnold had seen a mirage,^[3] but many people, including Arnold himself, were unsatisfied with this explanation and never let go of the idea that he had witnessed alien spacecraft. Later, Arnold claimed to see more flying saucers and wrote a book about his experiences, becoming almost a legendary figure among ufologists.

7 Perytons

For decades, the Bleien Radio Observatory in Switzerland and the Parkes radio telescope in Australia had been catching bursts of short signals that nobody could explain. They were named perytons after the mythological hybrid creature Peryton. Their frequency and habit of appearing in clusters resembled the behavior of fast radio bursts (FRBs), which are extragalactic signals of unknown origin. Fast radio bursts had been theorized to be artificial messages sent by extraterrestrial intelligence, so the perytons also created some speculation. It turned out the signals were coming from near Earth, which debunked the alien theory, but their exact origin was still a mystery for years.

The enigma was finally solved in 2015, when scientists at the Parkes telescope discovered the rather mundane origin of the signals: their leaking kitchen microwave. Every time the microwave door was opened prematurely, it released a radio pulse that resembled FRBs. Sometimes, great mysteries have underwhelming explanations.^[4]

6 Fast Radio Bursts Coming From Alien Starships

The unexplained fast radio bursts caught by telescopes around the world have been theorized to be messages from extraterrestrial species, but in 2017, a pair of scientists proposed they could have another kind of alien origin. Manasvi Lingam and Abraham Loeb hypothesized that the radio bursts could be used to propel highly advanced alien spaceships forward in the vastness of outer space.^[5] In this theory, the FRBs we have detected are not messages to us but a byproduct of the spaceships needing to be powered by something more powerful than regular fuel.

Lingam and Loeb have done the mathematics to support their idea, but recent findings of FRBs that repeat themselves and come from a certain place in the sky make this theory seem less plausible. The bursts might actually be caused by neutron stars or be related to black holes.

5 Crop Circles

Crop circles, also known as crop formations, are large patterns created on crop fields by pressing down the plants. In the last four decades, more and more of these formations have been appearing, even though the idea itself is nothing new. Their overnight appearance and huge scale make them seem mysterious, and some people investigating the patterns have claimed that there is no way they have been created by humans.

The theory of aliens creating the circles as messages was never supported by scientists but was brought to public consciousness after the phenomenon got wide media coverage. In reality, crop circles are man-made. Some are artwork; others are just pranks meant to confuse the public.^[6] Nevertheless, the theory of UFOs having created the crop formations still lives on in some pseudoscientific belief systems despite having been refuted.

4 Alien Megastructures Around Tabby’s Star

The now-retired Kepler space observatory is famous for its search for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars. In 2015, citizen scientists going through the data collected by Kepler noticed something unusual about one star. Tabby’s star, formally known as KIC 8462852, had some very unusual changes in its brightness. The star seemed to have irregular light fluctuations, dimming substantially.

There have been various theories about the origin of the phenomenon. Some astronomers proposed there could be alien megastructures around the star.^[7] Energy-harvesting megastructures encompassing an entire star, such as Dyson swarms, were originally introduced in sci-fi but made their way to actual scientific thought experiments. Tabby’s star was of great interest to SETI, but recent studies say the dimming is most likely caused by dust and not any opaque object, intelligently designed or natural.

3 Roswell UFO Incident

The Roswell incident is probably the most famous UFO tale ever, with the US military and politicians having had to comment on the incident multiple times even decades later. In the summer of 1947, a United States Army Air Forces balloon crashed at a ranch located in New Mexico. A man named William Brazel found the debris, and having heard stories about flying saucers, he told the local sheriff he might have found the remains of one. The sheriff called the local Air Force base, which issued a press release about the event.^[8] It got a lot of interest until a new press statement was made to explain the terrestrial origin of the balloon.

Decades later, the incident got new attention when UFO researches started interviewing the supposed witnesses and going through documents. The new theory was that alien bodies had been removed from the crash site, and the US government had covered up the truth about the Roswell events. This might sound far-fetched, but in a 2013 US poll, a fifth of the respondents still believed the Roswell incident really was an UFO crash, making it one of the most widely believed alien theories.

2 The Little Green Men Signal

In 1967, graduate student Jocelyn Bell detected a curious signal at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory in the UK. The signal was so consistent and fast that it seemed artificial, but it was not man-made. Bell and her advisor Antony Hewish famously dubbed it LGM-1 for “Little Green Men.”^[9] Extraterrestrial messaging was not the scientists’ main suspect, but they had to consider the possibility and how they would announce it to the public in case it turned out to be aliens. When they discovered a similar signal, they ruled out the possibility of extraterrestrials, since it was unlikely that two separate alien species would be trying to communicate with them simultaneously.

In reality, Bell and Hewish had discovered pulsars, rotating neutron stars that that emit beams of electromagnetic radiation. The beams from such rotating stars are pointed toward Earth at regular intervals, making them seem like intelligently designed transmissions. Even though it was a false alarm in terms of aliens, the discovery of pulsars was a very useful finding for astronomers.

1 Wow! Signal

In 1977, SETI astronomer Jerry R. Ehman was reviewing data collected the previous day by Ohio State University’s “Big Ear” telescope. He noticed the telescope had picked up 72 seconds of a noteworthy, strong signal. What made the signal so notable was its frequency. The frequency range of the signal is protected, meaning nobody on Earth can broadcast on it, so the signal did not come from Earth.

At the same time, that specific frequency could very plausibly be used for communication. It would make sense for an intelligent species to pick a “channel” that is easy to listen to, as opposed to the frequencies of Big Bang background radiation or quantum noise. It also closely mimicked the electromagnetic wavelength of hydrogen, the most common and easily recognizable element in the universe.

The signal was named “Wow!” after the excited comment Ehman wrote on the computer printout. The source of Wow! has never been determined,^[10] making it the strongest candidate for alien messaging ever discovered.

Prehistory squeezed out an inexhaustible list of captivating creatures. Everyone already knows about the raptors, mammoths, saber-tooth tigers, and similarly legendary beasts, but that’s barely scratching the surface of nature’s creativity.

From sea lion–like whales that popped above water to give birth to the VW Beetle–sized armadillo that gave up its shell for the benefit of humanity to a terrible armored frog that snatched up cute little baby dinosaurs, the prehistoric world was teeming with fascinating but little-known life-forms.

10 Primitive Whales That Gave Birth On Land

Protocetids, the primitive whales of 50 million years ago, looked mind-blowingly goofy. They were relatively small, only about 2–5 meters (7–16 ft) long. And they had four ridiculous limbs that ended in hoofed flippers.

These weird appendages allowed creatures like Maiacetus inuus to flop about on land like a sea lion as the lineage of early whales split from their goatlike and cowlike ancestors and took to the waves.^[1]

Protocetids fed in the water but emerged onto land for other daily activities, including sleeping, mating, and giving birth.

One delectably rare fossil of a pregnant mother and her unborn calf supports the land-birth theory. The 48-million-year-old calf is positioned headfirst in the womb like land mammals whereas aquatic creatures are positioned tailfirst to avoid drowning before the end of labor.

9 Bus-Sized Crocodiles That Ruled The Seas

Machimosaurus rex was discovered within 120-million-year-old rocks on the edge of the Sahara in Tunisia in an area that was once an ocean-facing lagoon.^[2]

Like the modern crocs on Nat Geo and Science, Machimosaurus made its living as an ambush predator. It snapped up sea creatures as well as land creatures that ventured too close to the shore. And with its short, rounded teeth, it could have easily ground prehistory’s large turtles into dust.

It’s the largest sea-dwelling crocodile ever—three tons and 9 meters (30 ft) of fury—with a skull that surpasses 1.5 meters (5 ft) in length.

8 Bitey Otters That Grew As Large As Wolves

Around six million years ago, the wetlands and swampy forests of southwest China housed wolf-sized otters that could mess you up spectacularly. The 50-kilogram (110 lb) Siamogale melilutra wasn’t just big, it was a top predator with a surprisingly strong bite.

Typically, jaw sturdiness decreases as otter size increases. But S. melilutra was an evolutionary outlier with jaws that killed and crunched much larger, tougher prey than any existing otter.

Unlike modern otters that feast on plants and small animals, including rodents and crabs, S. melilutra chomped through the thicker shells of large mollusks and turtles and even through bird bones for additional nutriment.^[3]

7 A Dinosaur Equipped With Sails

Amargasaurus was a sauropod (think brontosaurus but smaller) about 9 meters (30 ft) in length and relatively light at just three tons. It lived during the Cretaceous period 130 million years ago and munched on plants.

But unlike other sauropods, it had two rows of spines that ran down its neck and back. The spines are of uncertain purpose, but maybe they were covered in bone and used for self-defense.^[4]

Alternatively (and the cooler option), the spines may be scaffolding for two parallel sails.

These impressive skin flaps could have helped to dissipate heat. Or the sail may have been used for mating displays and then was evolutionarily selected because lady Amargasauruses preferred prominent spines and sails—and you know they all did.

6 Ankylosaurs Survived Thanks To Nasal Air Conditioning Systems

Massive dinosaurs like the heavily horned and armored ankylosaurs countered their higher risk of overheating with convoluted nasal passages that worked as a natural AC.

In addition to smelling things, noses also heat and humidify inhaled air. In birds and mammals like us, a furl of bones and cartilage improves heat exchange by increasing surface area. But for ankylosaurs like the hippo-sized Panoplosaurus and the rhino-sized Euoplocephalus, evolution followed a different route.

CT scanning and fluid dynamics revealed “insanely long nasal passages coiled up in their snouts” which researchers liken to crazy straws. And they helped a lot. Just by playing with nasal passage geometry, evolution found a way to increase the gigantic dinosaurs’ heat-transfer rates by 50 percent.^[5]

5 Pterosaurs May Have Been Feathered

Around 230 million to 66 million years ago, the fearsome flying reptiles known as pterosaurs ruled the skies and terrorized the dinosaurs. And it goes that pterosaurs were covered in fur-like pycnofibers.

But recent research contends that they sported a full spectrum of feathers, according to 160-million-year-old remains uncovered at the Daohugou Formation in Mongolia. The remains are so finely maintained by nature’s serendipity that they apparently preserved detail all the way down to the individual feather.

They also suggest that pterosaurs had four different types of feathers about 80 million years before such things appeared on dinosaurs and birds.^[6]

4 Glyptodon Shells Provided Prehistoric Shelters

The Glyptodon was an ancient armadillo. Like other prehistoric beasts, evolution scaled it up to “holy crap” proportions. This giant antediluvian ‘dillo grew to 3 meters (10 ft) in length and weighed a ton, matching a Volkswagen Beetle.

Like the modern armadillo, it carried dome-like armor made of bony plates. But other than its appearance, it wasn’t too threatening to others because it ate plants in its native South American swamplands. It didn’t even have a weaponized club-tail like its fellow glyptodonts.

The Glyptodon showed up on the evolutionary scene two million years ago and disappeared around 10,000 years ago—probably with a lot of help from human hunters, who sometimes used its discarded shell for temporary shelter.^[7]

3 The Frog That Ate Baby Dinosaurs

Meet Beelzebufo ampinga, the armored devil frog which definitely merited its name.

The pugnacious Beelzebufo lived around 70 million years ago in Madagascar, the land of oddities. And it was disgustingly big. It weighed in at 5 kilograms (10 lb) and measured 41 centimeters (16 in) in length like a bumpy, slimy beach ball.

It had a cranial shield to protect its noggin and insane bite strength which helped it to ambush its prey, as per modern horned frogs. According to researchers, it could have crunched baby dinosaurs with a bite that imparted 2,200 newtons, as much force as a wolf or even a tiger.^[8]

2 Beaked, Turkey-Sized Ornithopods That Swarmed Prehistoric Plains

Some of the most successful dinosaurs of all time—such as the ornithopods—weren’t at all fierce. The ornithopods were bipedal plant grazers that became one of the most successful groups during the Cretaceous period 146 million to 66 million years ago.

Based on scant remains, including a complement of tail bones and a bit of foot found in Australia, researchers pieced together the ornithopods’ Diluvicursor pickeringi. This beaked, turkey-sized animal straddled the edge of the Antarctic Circle 113 million years ago when Antarctica and Australia were still connected.

This dino was built for agile running with a short, muscular tail and stout, powerful legs. But it only terrorized plant life, feasting on mosses, ferns, seeds, lichens, and possibly flowers.^[9]

1 Unicorns Did Exist

Unicorns did exist. But they were horrifying and awesome and probably gored an early human or two with a horn that measured more than 1 meter (3 ft) in length.

It was known as Elasmotherium sibiricum, and records show it split off from modern rhinos about 40 million years ago. At 3.5 tons, it was tanklike and twice the size of extant rhinos, although its anatomy was built running.

Researchers thought that the “Siberian unicorn” died out about 100,000–200,000 years ago. But now they say it didn’t disappear until much more recently—39,000 years ago.

Luckily for us, as climate change delivered Earth from an ice age, it also destroyed the Siberian unicorn’s primary food source of tough, dry grasses and dumped it into the evolutionary reject pile.^[10]

Ivan writes about neat things for the Internet. You can contact him at [email protected].

Keeping up with all the news in the world can be a difficult task for anyone. That’s why we are here to help with a few weekly lists that look at some of the most notable events that occurred recently. Click here to find out about the crucial stories that made the headlines, or read on to find out about some bizarre and unique tales.

We have a few architectural stories this week about the world’s largest 3-D-printed bridge and an ancient stone circle that wasn’t so ancient. Two World War mysteries get answers, and we explore a budding rivalry between Canada and Norway over which country has the largest moose. In the world of cosmology, we have two new ideas to explore—one is about an alternative to the elusive Planet Nine and the other about the origins of black holes.

10 Enter The Moose Wars

A war is brewing between Canada and Norway over which country has the world’s tallest moose statue.

The city of Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan is home to Mac the Moose, a 9.8-meter-tall (32 ft) sculpture which was the largest moose in the world for over 30 years. It lost that title in 2015 when Norwegians from Stor-Elvdal built Storelgen (“The Big Elk”)—a shiny, stainless steel bull built 30 centimeters (12 in) higher with the express purpose of becoming the new tallest moose in the world.

It seems that the Canadians have had enough. Two comedians, Justin Reves and Greg Moore, have pleaded with the people of Moose Jaw to fight back and reclaim the record. They have set up an online fundraiser in the hopes of raising $50,000 to hire an engineer to increase the size of Mac. They have the support of the city’s mayor, Fraser Tolmie, who revealed that the fight is personal for him as the moose was named after his wife’s great-uncle.^[1]

The Scandinavians say there is no chance that they will let this one go. Stor-Elvdal’s deputy mayor, Linda Henriksen, said that they will do whatever they can to ensure that Storelgen keeps the title. They are prepared to double the size of their moose, if need be, but are waiting on the Canadians to act first.

9 The Not-So-Ancient Stone Circle

Scottish archaeologists were shocked to find out that an “ancient” stone circle they had been studying was actually built in the 1990s.

The “recumbent stone circle” in Leochel-Cushnie, Aberdeenshire, was hailed as a unique landmark because it was smaller in size than other similar monuments. Archaeologists discovered it on a farm last year and initially believed it to be 3,500–4,500 years old because that is the time period in which most stone circles were built throughout the northeast of Scotland.

Earlier this month, researchers from Historic Environment Scotland received a disheartening call from the former owner of the farm. He told them that the “ancient” monument was just a replica that he built in the mid-1990s.

Aberdeenshire council spokesman Neil Ackerman described the revelation as “disappointing” but still considers the circle a great addition to the local landscape. The modern replica will be included in official records going forward to prevent any future misidentifications.^[2]

8 The Shepherding Disk Hypothesis

A new study published in The Astronomical Journal proposes an alternative to the mysterious Planet Nine which would account for the bizarre observations made in the Kuiper Belt.

The idea of an undiscovered planet hiding somewhere in the outer solar system appeared when Caltech astronomers discovered icy bodies which were moving together in a doughnut shape as if they were gravitationally tethered to a large object. Later, other researchers found more trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) with eccentric orbits which showed that there was something interfering with their rotation. Scientists speculated that Planet Nine was responsible.

A team from the University of Cambridge and the American University of Beirut opined that, instead of one giant object, the culprit was a massive ice disk comprised of numerous small bodies spread out over a large area. They call this the “shepherding disk hypothesis” and claim that the collective attractions of all those objects would be enough to interfere with the orbits of other TNOs.^[3]

While this is more feasible than an undetected planet, there is yet no observational evidence to support the claim.

7 Like A Prayer

Pope Francis has launched an app which allows Catholics around the world to join him in prayer.

The application is called “Click to Pray” and was launched ahead of World Youth Day 2019. It is currently available in six languages. With the app, users will know exactly when the pope is praying and what he is praying for.^[4]

During a demo from an upstairs window of the Apostolic Palace, the pontiff prayed for Colombia and the Mediterranean Sea, referring to a car bomb that claimed the lives of 20 police cadets and shipwrecks that killed hundreds of migrants in the Mediterranean, respectively.

Catholics can check the pope’s profile on “Click to Pray” to find out his intentions and even click on an icon to indicate that they joined him in prayer.

6 Who Was Spandau #7?

A recent DNA study put to bed an old World War II conspiracy theory which claimed that inmate Spandau #7 was not the real Rudolf Hess but a doppelganger.

One of the leading members of the Nazi Party, Rudolf Hess went to Scotland alone in May 1941. He was arrested, put on trial, and sent to Spandau Prison in 1947. He spent the rest of his life as inmate Spandau #7 until he was found hanged in his cell in 1987.

Some people believe that the prisoner was not the real Hess. They have claimed that there were some physical discrepancies such as the lack of chest scars consistent with his World War I injuries or the lack of a gap in his front teeth.^[5]

Spandau #7 also refused to see relatives until 1969 and, at one point, claimed to have amnesia. There were prominent people who believed Hess had been replaced with a look-alike, including his doctor at Spandau and US President Franklin Roosevelt.

This conspiracy seemed destined to remain a mystery. There were no physical remains to analyze. Hess’s body was cremated and his grave site destroyed when it became a pilgrimage for neo-Nazis.

However, scientists found a blood sample taken from the inmate in 1982. It had been placed on a microscope slide and hermetically sealed for decades. They tracked down a male relative of Hess and compared their DNA. There was a 99.99 percent chance that they were related. Spandau #7 was Rudolf Hess.

5 For Whom The Bell Tolls

From a solved World War II mystery, we travel further back to World War I. Two historians believe that they have identified the Italian soldier who bore the brunt of a mortar attack and inadvertently saved the life of a young Ernest Hemingway.

An 18-year-old Hemingway was serving as a Red Cross volunteer on the battleground along the Piave River on the Austro-Italian front. He was hit by a mortar shell which gravely wounded the young American. Nevertheless, he survived because most of the impact was taken by an Italian soldier who was standing next to him.

American author James McGrath Morris and Italian historian Marino Perissinotto think they have identified the infantryman through the process of elimination. Eighteen Italian soldiers died that night. Fifteen of them were deployed in different parts of the front. Two of the remaining three were with the 152nd regiment a few kilometers behind the front line. That only left a 26-year-old private from Montalcino named Fedele Temperini.^[6]

As further evidence, the two researchers found a military report from an officer at a Red Cross station in the Republic of San Marino. It said that Hemingway was treated alongside an Italian soldier who succumbed to his wounds. The Italian was from the 69th infantry regiment which was Temperini’s unit. The historians are currently lobbying to have Temperini’s name included on a memorial along the Piave River where Hemingway was injured.

4 Monty Strikes Again

Melbourne’s infamous Montague Street Bridge has claimed its first victim of 2019 after 224 days of peace.

The bridge colorfully referred to as “Monty” has a low clearance of just 3 meters (10 ft). Ever since its construction over 100 years ago, it has been the bane of unaware truck drivers who plow into it and get their vehicles stuck under the bridge.

It is hard to say exactly how many collisions have taken place. A website keeps track of how many days have passed since the last crash, but it only goes back to 2016. Even so, it still has 20 entries. That does not count the most recent hit which took place this Tuesday.^[7]

In an effort to put an end to these collisions, Victorian traffic authority VicRoads installed height detection gantries on the main approaches to the bridge with black and yellow paddles. If the top of the truck hits the paddles, that means it will also hit Monty.

In total, 26 different warning signs advise drivers of the bridge’s low clearance. Even so, 14 crashes still occurred since the gantries have been installed. But a VicRoads spokesman feels that “stacks of accidents” have been prevented.

Some accidents are more serious than others. Last month, a bus driver received a five-year sentence after crashing a bus into the bridge and severely injuring six passengers.

3 Toilet Snake

Australia is currently experiencing blistering hot weather, and animals are taking refuge wherever they can. One snake sneaked into the toilet of a home in Brisbane and then bit a woman when she sat on the toilet.

Helen Richards was visiting relatives. In the night, she went to the bathroom without turning on the lights and did not see the 1.5-meter (5 ft) carpet python cooling off in the toilet.

As soon as she sat down, Helen felt a “sharp tap” which made her jump off the seat with her pants around her ankles. When she turned around, she saw something which resembled a “longneck turtle receding back into the bowl.”^[8]

Fortunately for Helen, the snake was nonvenomous and the bites were relatively harmless. She was fine after being treated with an antiseptic, and the snake was removed by a reptile handler.

2 Bridge Over The Small Canal

The longest 3-D-printed bridge in the world is now open to the people of Shanghai.

The concrete bridge is 26 meters (86 ft) long and was constructed by a team from the Tsinghua University School of Architecture in Beijing entirely using 3-D-printing technology. It is located in Shanghai’s Baoshan District and was modeled on the ancient Zhaozhou (Anji) Bridge, which is the oldest standing bridge in China.

The crossing consists of 112 separate concrete units—44 for the body and 68 for the two flowing sides. It also contains monitoring systems which keep track of the internal stress placed on the bridge in real time. According to designer Professor Xu Weiguo, they were all produced in just 450 hours and cost only a third of what a regular bridge of similar size would cost.^[9]

1 Dark Matter Halos Create Black Holes

Given how elusive and mysterious black holes are supposed to be, scientists seem to be discovering new things about these celestial objects every week. This recent finding, however, has the potential to completely rewrite our understanding of the cosmic phenomenon as it suggests that the first massive black holes of the primordial universe were made in halos of dark matter.

The study was published in Nature with backing from NASA, the EU, and the National Science Foundation and is the result of an international effort from researchers from the United States and Ireland. It shows that when galaxies formed very rapidly and very violently, they disrupted the normal formation of stars and triggered the creation of black holes.

This newly discovered mechanism would have been particularly prevalent in halos of dark matter due to their rapid growth. According to one of the paper’s authors, Georgia Tech astrophysics professor John Wise, forming massive black holes requires “being in a rare region with an intense convergence of matter.”^[10]

If this new model is correct, then it shifts away from the previously accepted thinking that massive black holes could only appear when exposed to huge levels of radiation powerful enough to inhibit star formation. It also suggests that they are far more common than we previously thought.

Festivals—a hectic schedule of your favorite bands playing live, a pilgrimage into the great outdoors, a chance to meet like-minded new friends, and a lifetime of memories. At least, that’s what promoters would have you believe. So what happens when these expectations are not a reality and the event is plunged into chaos?

SEE ALSO: 10 Frozen Timepieces That Marked Death And Disaster

These following disasters have left furious ticket holders demanding their money back and event organizers red-faced. What was supposed to be the time of their lives became a weekend of hell.

10 Fyre Festival
2017

Anyone who has had access to the Internet in the past couple of years would have heard about the disaster that was Fyre Festival. Located in the Bahamas, it was billed as the most luxurious festival in the world and promoted by the most elite models around the globe.

After paying between $1,200 and $100,000 each, ticket holders were promised flights from Miami, luxury accommodation on yachts, kayaking on the crystal clear waters, and performances from Major Lazer and Blink-182.

When attendees landed on the island, they soon found all they were promised was not coming to them. The accommodations were recycled refugee tents, the food was prepackaged sandwiches instead of gourmet meals, and no medical or event staff was on hand. There was also no cell phone or Internet service and no running water. The festival became the subject of a Netflix documentary, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened.

Organizer Billy McFarland, then 26, pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to six years behind bars.^[1]

9 Woodstock
1999

To see headliners like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, and Joe Cocker, half a million people attended the Woodstock festival in 1969. Fast-forward 30 years, and it was a completely different scene as organizers tried to emulate the hippie era. Woodstock ’99, which took place in Rome, New York, was attended by 220,000 people and went wrong from the very beginning.

Organizers had failed to advise attendees to bring enough water, and the dehydrated crowds were met with a $4 charge for a single bottle. The Baltimore Sun reported, “More than 700 had been treated for heat exhaustion and dehydration.”

Crowd control was also a serious issue. Volunteer security was recruited from New York City. But as things became hostile, they ditched their posts and left the police dangerously outnumbered.

Then there was the problem with overcrowding as many were using fake passes to get through the gates. The Syracuse Post-Standard reported, “Security guards said they were confiscating fake passes at the rate of 50 an hour at just one gate.” Far from “peace, love, and happiness,” that was the final Woodstock event.^[2]

8 TomorrowWorld
2015

In 2015, international music festival TomorrowWorld in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia, devolved into near-riots. Heavy rain turned the fields into a sinking mud pit, and organizers decided to limit transport services back to the surrounding areas which left thousands stranded.

Festivalgoers had two choices: either hike for about 8 kilometers (5 mi) or pay for an Uber that charged a surge price of five times the normal rate. Instead, many decided to sleep on the side of the road. They were not supplied with any food or water.

One attendee told Vice News that he managed to leave the event by sneaking onto a shuttle bus for event staff. He recalled, “By the time we flagged down that bus, we were up to over $100 pooled together to try to buy our way out. The rich and the lucky rode, the poor walked, and the poor and tired stopped wherever they could find open ground.”^[3]

The Belgium-founded festival will always be remembered for this post-apocalyptic atmosphere.

7 Bloc Festival
2012

To call Bloc Festival in 2012 “chaotic” might be an understatement. One of the largest electronic dance music festivals in the UK was shut down due to serious safety fears with overcrowding.

Police were sent to help safely evacuate the attendees at the Royal Victoria Docks venue. Many people still stood in the same queue they had been in for hours as they waited to get in. Disgruntled ticket holders had paid upward of $100 each to watch acts like Snoop Dogg and Orbital perform.

Bloc then began trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons. People posted photos of attendees stuck behind crowd control barriers and held back by a huge police presence.

One tweet read, “Bloc is um a disaster right now. We’re in the middle of a car crash.” Another tweeted, “Scary, and very nearly led to injuries; all we were told was ‘move back’—where to exactly?”^[4]

After 2016, the founders shut down the annual festival and focused on building their own “super club” instead.

6 Glastonbury
1990 And 2005

It’s a wonder that organizers would allow the Glastonbury festival to descend into chaos after two decades of hosting it. But that’s exactly what happened in 1990. That year, the crowds should have remembered the event for headliners Sinead O’Connor and The Cure, but the risk of “near-asphyxiation” made the headlines instead.^[5]

More than 75,000 people were in attendance at the famous Pyramid Stage, causing a huge crush in the crowd. Bands even had to stop their sets as helicopters landed nearby to tend to the injured.

In 2005, people were at risk again. This time, it was due to 1.2 meters (4 ft) of water flooding the camping sites and performance area. Even the Acoustic Stage wasn’t safe as it was struck by lightning.

The flooding disaster led organizers to eventually fork out millions on a new drainage system before they returned two years later. Despite these bad experiences, Glastonbury is still considered one of the greatest music festivals in the world.

5 Isle Of Wight
2012

In 2011, the Isle of Wight festival promised an epic lineup featuring Tom Petty, Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen, Biffy Clyro, and more. Then came the heavy rain, which forced 600 people to sleep in their cars overnight as boats transporting them to the island could not dock due to the severe weather. Others were left gridlocked in traffic for more than 15 hours. Police even opened a local football club for people to take shelter through the night.

The following day, organizers told attendees that they should ditch their cars if they wanted a chance to make it to the festival. Speaking of the experience, one festivalgoer told Sky News, “We’ve gone through some highs and some lows, it’s been 14 hours, and we’re sleep-deprived. Fortunately, we’ve took a lot of food with us, but there were people there that had no food.”^[6]

She added, “There were people with kids, people with dogs, so we tried to remain in high spirits, but it’s been a long slog.”

4 Bestival
2008

Turning up to a festival, you can always expect some mud. But no one at Bestival in 2008 could have predicted how severe the conditions would become. The weather was so bad that year as thunder, lightning, rain, and gale-force winds ripped through the camping grounds.

Many had their tents submerged in the mud. The less fortunate had their camps completely blown away with their belongings. Even the main stages for the performances began to sink into the ground.

Despite the ongoing battle with a furious Mother Nature, Bestival attendees were looking forward to seeing headliner Amy Winehouse perform. That didn’t quite go as planned, either.

Arriving onstage 40 minutes late, Winehouse—who was battling drug and alcohol addiction at the time—staggered around the stage, swilled her drink, and cut the set short by performing for only 30 minutes. The soul singer was met with boos from the crowd.^[7]

Sadly in 2011, she died at age 27 due to alcohol poisoning.

3 Electric Daisy Carnival
2010

During the 1990s, Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) attracted many festivalgoers thanks to the rise in popular electronic dance music. The event began as a warehouse party held in Austin, San Bernardino, New York City, Los Angeles, and Puerto Rico.

Attendees depended on handouts, which would announce the exact location of the raves until it blew up into something much bigger. Word had leaked out that EDC was the hottest party in town. Unfortunately, that also attracted a lot of minors.

In 2010, the event at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was overwhelmed by the number of attendees under 18 years old. Heavy drugs were in use among the minors, and tragically, a 15-year-old girl died during the event.

Los Angeles forced EDC out of the area. The organizers stated, “Without an executed contract in place at this time, it has become impossible to guarantee to all of the fans and talent that EDC can be produced at this venue this year.” The event eventually found a new home in Las Vegas, and they hit a record attendance of 700,000 people in 2014.^[8]

2 Sled Island
2013

Sled Island festival in Calgary, Canada, has recovered well from its disastrous attempt in 2013. Acts including The Jesus and Mary Chain, Explosions in the Sky, Divine Fits, and Mac DeMarco were scheduled to appear alongside more than 250 other bands over the four-day weekend in June. That was until severe weather shut down the entire event.

On the second day of the festival, director Maud Salvi received mandatory evacuation orders due to rising floodwaters. The permits for the festival had been revoked, and the event organizers posted on their website: “In light of the current emergency situation, and in line with our commitment to the safety of festivalgoers, all remaining Sled Island festival events are canceled.”

Sled Island festival lost a fortune due to the cancellation. Ticket holders were offered refunds, which amounted to around $200,000. The festival came back the following year, proving that previous severe flooding wasn’t going to dampen their mood.^[9]

1 Powder Ridge Rock Festival
1970

Powder Ridge Rock Festival has become known as “the greatest rock concert that never happened.” Following the success of Woodstock, promoters were hoping to be the next big rock festival that people would flock to in the thousands. In 1970, more than 50,000 people were expected to arrive at Powder Ridge Rock Festival in Middlefield, Connecticut, to see rock royalty Fleetwood Mac and Janis Joplin.

Then, just one month before, the town of Middlefield rejected the application for the festival as local residents took legal action. In a time before the Internet, word did not get back to all attendees that the festival was canceled and 30,000 individuals showed up anyway.^[10]

There was no food, no music, and no water supply. But there were a lot of drug dealers. Doctors volunteered their services to help with the “drug crisis” that took place over the next few days as heavy hallucinogens were being used. By the end of the weekend and many bad drug trips later, the attendees eventually left Powder Ridge.

Cheish Merryweather is the founder of Crime Viral. A true crime and oddities fanatic. Twitter: @thecheish.

A meteor is the fireball that occurs when a space rock (called a meteoroid) burns during its entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.^[1] For this reason, every space rock that falls naturally to Earth inevitably becomes a meteor, be it of greater or lesser intensity. This concept serves as a starting point for the following list.

But it happens that sometimes an alien rock falls to Earth, becomes a meteor, and then, for some reason, decides to leave our atmosphere to continue its journey through space. Below, we will see ten examples of meteors that exhibited this behavior, some of which even became awe-inspiring spectacles.

10 Japan Earth-Grazer
2006

As stated in the introduction, meteors generally occur when space rocks burn and disintegrate upon entering the Earth’s atmosphere. But on some occasions, such meteoroids fall to Earth in a trajectory almost parallel to its surface and “bounce” in the upper atmosphere. So after becoming bright meteors for a moment, these rocks just keep going and return to outer space. We call these meteors “Earth-grazers.”

An Earth-grazer event occurred in Japan on March 29, 2006. A bright fireball crossed the sky over several Japanese cities, allowing several stations to accurately measure its trajectory and characteristics. The cause of the fireball was a meteoroid of approximately 100 kilograms (220 lb) that entered the atmosphere at a height of 87 kilometers (54 mi). From there, the meteor traveled about 1,000 kilometers (621 mi) over Japan, lasting 35 seconds before leaving Earth.^[2]

This was the third Earth-grazing meteor scientifically observed and measured accurately. Photographs, recordings by TV cameras, telescopic observations, and a special software were used to determine its characteristics. Even with all this equipment available, there are very few documented cases of Earth-grazers around the world, although most of the items on this list fit the category.

9 Fast-Moving Fireball
1990

On October 13, 1990, two astronomical stations detected the passage of an Earth-grazer meteor over Czechoslovakia and Poland. Three other independent observers in Czechoslovakia and a fourth person in Denmark also confirmed the sighting. The fireball was caused by a 44-kilogram (97 lb) meteoroid, which descended into the Earth’s atmosphere to a minimum height of 98 kilometers (61 mi). It was moving at a speed of around 42 kilometers per second (26 miles per second), about 20 times faster than the fastest manned aircraft in the world.

For the nearly ten seconds it was visible in the night sky, the Earth-grazer traveled a distance of 409 kilometers (254 mi).^[3] After that, the meteor left the atmosphere and returned to space, now with a reduced speed. Its mass was also reduced; after burning a little in the atmosphere, it lost 350 grams (0.77 lb) of material. To verify the object’s trajectory, NASA ran computer simulations, whose results were similar to direct observations and confirmed that the meteor left the Earth. A Czech camera station that is part of the “European Fireball Network” program photographed the Earth-grazer in mid-flight. The image shows the bright object moving across the visible sky near its highest point.

8 The Great Meteor
1860

On some occasions, an Earth-grazer meteor can fall low enough into the atmosphere to end up breaking into pieces. When that happens, the Earth-grazer becomes multiple, smaller fireballs that travel horizontally across the sky in the same direction. Some fragments disintegrate in the atmosphere, while others return to space. Because the lights move in a seemingly organized way and at a lower speed, this phenomenon is known as a “meteor procession.” This type of Earth-grazer is even stranger, with only four known cases to date.

One of these cases occurred on July 20, 1860. It was 9:49 PM when the American painter Frederic Church and his wife (who were on their honeymoon in Catskill, New York) saw a row of bright orange meteors that crossed the entire sky. Not far from there, the famous writer Walt Whitman also saw the same lights. In his poem “Year of Meteors (1859–60),” he described them as “the strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear shooting over our heads.” Hundreds of people across the United States witnessed the fireballs, and numerous newspapers of the time also described the event.

What all these people saw was a rare meteor procession involving several meteors that crossed the North American sky from west to east.^[4] The fragmented Earth-grazer descended on the Great Lakes between the United States and Canada, reached its minimum height above the Hudson River in New York, and continued moving toward the Atlantic Ocean. After a journey of more than 1,600 kilometers (994 mi), the meteors escaped the atmosphere and left Earth behind.

7 Cometary Fragment
2012

20,000 years ago, a large comet in our solar system shattered and gave birth to Comet Encke (officially called 2P/Encke), famous for approaching Earth frequently. On June 10, 2012, a meteoroid from this comet came to visit our planet and then resumed its journey through space. The rock weighed 16 kilograms (35 lb) and entered our atmosphere about 100 kilometers (62 mi) above the east of Spain.

The Earth-grazer moved at an astounding speed of 105,000 kilometers per hour (65,244 mph) while advancing toward the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula. After descending to around 98 kilometers (61 mi) above sea level, the meteor began to regain altitude. While still being over Spain and 32 kilometers (20 mi) away from the Atlantic Ocean, the fireball said goodbye to us and went into space again, with only a minimal change of speed. However, our planet did leave marks on it. The scorched meteoroid lost 260 grams (0.57 lb) in the atmosphere and returned to its orbit with a fusion crust, the external layer of melted rock typical of meteorites.

In total, the fireball traveled 510 kilometers (317 mi) in the atmosphere for 17 seconds. This former meteor has several particular characteristics that differentiate it from the rest. On the one hand, it is the faintest Earth-grazer meteor scientifically observed, with a brightness similar to that of the planet Venus. And in addition, it is the first of such events that comes from a meteor shower. It came specifically from the Zeta Perseid meteor shower that occurs in June each year, which, in turn, comes from the same space debris field as Comet Encke.^[5]

6 Christmas Eve Meteor
2014

On the night of December 24, 2014, while everyone was busy on Christmas Eve, a meteor decided to come to Earth to observe us. Then, for some reason, it left. A total of 13 observation stations in Spain and Portugal detected an Earth-grazing fireball moving slowly—for a meteor—from southeast to northwest over Europe. The object was a rock of 100 kilograms (220 lb) and 1 meter (3.3 ft) in diameter, flying at a speed of 68,400 kilometers per hour (42,500 mph).

The meteor entered the atmosphere over North Africa, beginning to glow 105 kilometers (65 mi) high. Then, the Earth-grazer continued to move and descend down to a height of 75 kilometers (47 mi) over Spain. There, the fireball was moving so slowly that some drivers had time to park to get out and see it pass. The meteor continued its journey, now over Portugal, as it began to ascend again. Finally, the Earth-grazer reached the Atlantic Ocean, and about 100 kilometers (62 mi) away from the coast of Galicia (Spain), it returned to space.

The meteoroid, whose code name is SPMN241214, is a rock that came from the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. After its close encounter with the Earth, the rock had its trajectory modified, although it still orbits around the Sun as before. Footage from the University of Huelva shows that the object was very bright, leaving a short and thin trail behind. Another recording from the Spanish province of Guadalajara (shown above) reaffirms the slowness of the meteor. Although in this video, the light lasts about half a minute before leaving the camera’s field of view, the total duration of the fireball was one minute.^[6]

5 Zagami Meteorite
1996

Not all shooting stars return to space on their own. Some rocks that were once meteors have flown back into outer space thanks to human intervention. In October 1962, a farmer was working in his fields in Zagami, Nigeria, when he suddenly heard a loud explosion. When he looked up at the sky, he saw a meteor fall and hit the ground only 3 meters (10 ft) away from him. The farmer noticed that now there was a crater 0.6 meters (2 ft) deep, with a black rock inside. This rock was nothing less than an 18-kilogram (40 lb) meteorite from Mars. The rock was ejected from the Martian surface after a comet impact 2.5 million years ago.

In November 1996, NASA began its first successful mission to the Red Planet after two decades—the Mars Global Surveyor. This mission consisted of launching a spacecraft destined to orbit Mars and photograph its surface for several years. But it turns out that the space probe did not fly alone: Inside, it was carrying a small piece of the Zagami meteorite, covered by a resin bubble. In September 1997, the NASA spacecraft began its orbit around Mars, thus returning the Zagami meteorite to where it belongs. That’s right, the rock left Mars millions of years ago, fell to us like a shooting star almost 60 years ago, and then finally returned to its home planet. Although Mars Global Surveyor is currently inactive, it is still orbiting our neighboring planet and is expected to collide with the Martian surface in the future.^[7] So the Zagami meteorite will become a meteor for the second time, now in its own world.

4 Unconfirmed Earth-Grazers
1996/2012

Meteors are so brief and unpredictable that it is difficult to determine where the next one will occur. And it is even more difficult to know if some particular sightings really were meteors that fell and returned to space. On October 3, 1996, an unusual shooting star crossed the night sky of New Mexico, after which it vanished. But 100 minutes later, the same fireball flew over California and exploded. It is believed that the meteor was a rock that bounced in the atmosphere and almost completed a full orbit before falling back over Southern California. However, the reports remain unconfirmed.

Meanwhile, at 11:00 PM on September 21, 2012, thousands of people across England, Scotland, and Ireland witnessed a fireball (shown above) flying through the skies. The light moved slowly and lasted about 40 seconds before disappearing. Two and a half hours later, another shooting star with the same characteristics crossed the sky over Canada and the United States.^[8] In several countries, the emergency lines were saturated with hundreds of phone calls from people frightened by the fireball they had just seen.

Soon, mathematician Esko Lyytinen, a member of the Ursa Astronomical Association (Finland), entered the scene and stated that the meteors of September 21 were related. Both were the result of a single space rock that began to burn in the sky over Ireland at a height of 53 kilometers (33 mi) but had enough speed to fly back into space. However, that entry into the atmosphere caused the rock to lose speed. So, 155 minutes and a full orbit around the Earth later, the remnants of the meteoroid reentered the atmosphere over North America and ended their crazy flight there. With limited information about the speed and angle of the meteors, some experts doubted this claim, but the possibility of a new Earth-grazer is still there.

3 Rare Aten Asteroid
2007

Information about the following Earth-grazer meteor, called EN070807, is scarce. All available references to it come from a single public access article from the Ondrejov Observatory, which is part of the European Fireball Network in the Czech Republic. Since the European Fireball Network names meteoric events with an abbreviation of the date they occurred, the code name of this Earth-grazer indicates that it visited Earth on August 7, 2007.

EN070807 is actually an Aten-type asteroid. Aten asteroids are rocky fragments that orbit the Sun at short distances, and it is believed that most of them come from the main asteroid belt. Many Aten asteroids occasionally intersect Earth’s orbit, which makes them a possible danger to our planet. In the case of EN070807, although its initial orbit was of the Aten type, its encounter with the Earth could have changed its trajectory.

While EN070807 was descending over the European sky, several stations in the Czech Republic photographed the event. This allowed the European Fireball Network to include the Earth-grazer in the aforementioned biannual report, along with 44 other conventional fireballs.^[9] Like the other meteors on this list, EN070807 lost material during its brief passage through the Earth’s atmosphere, but the rest of its body is still floating out there.

2 Campo Del Cielo Meteorite
2014

The Zagami meteorite is not the only alien rock that humans have sent back to space. For 4.5 billion years, a large iron body roamed outer space until it collided with Earth 4,000 years ago. The meteorite fell in Argentina, and locals call the impact zone “Campo del Cielo” (Field of the Sky).

In 2012, Scottish artist Katie Paterson acquired a small meteorite from Campo del Cielo, melted it at 1,700 degrees Celsius (3,092 °F), and reshaped it to its original form. The old-new meteorite, weighing 680 grams (1.5 lb), was then transferred to a European Space Agency facility in the Netherlands. And in July 2014, it was launched to the International Space Station, aboard the spacecraft Georges Lemaitre.

The meteorite was unpacked and prepared for its return to Earth in the same spacecraft that took it up there. Finally, in February 2015, the meteorite had a destructive reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere.^[10] So it differs from the Zagami meteorite in at least two things. First, the Campo del Cielo meteorite was a meteor twice. And second, it was a meteor twice in our own atmosphere. This is why Paterson’s work was internationally recognized, and it proved that a meteor which falls to Earth does not have to do it only once.

1 The Great Daylight Fireball
1972

While all the other Earth-grazing meteors we have seen on this list occurred at night or under poorly studied conditions, the following case occurred in broad daylight and in front of thousands of people. For this reason, it is the best-known Earth-grazer, and it is widely remembered as the Great Daylight Fireball. It was 2:30 PM on August 10, 1972, when a space rock entered the atmosphere above the state of Utah. And for more than a minute and a half, it crossed the sky in a northward direction. The meteor ended up leaving Earth over Alberta (Canada).

The Earth-grazer generated enough heat during its passage through the atmosphere for a US Air Force satellite to be able to detect it, obtaining data on its speed and trajectory. After several investigations, it was determined that the object entered our planet at a speed of approximately 54,100 kilometers per hour (33,616 mph). The meteoroid would have had a maximum mass of 570 tons and a length of 14 meters (46 ft)—roughly the size of a truck (but much heavier). When the object escaped the atmosphere at a height of approximately 102 kilometers (63 mi), its size became 10 meters (33 ft) at the most.

Its closest approach to the Earth’s surface occurred 58 kilometers (36 mi) above Montana. Due to its low altitude, people near the site could hear sonic booms coming from the meteor in the sky. There are multiple recordings of the fireball, such as a 20-second video showing its path or a photograph in which the Earth-grazer flies over the Teton Mountains in the state of Wyoming. Now, we all know the outcome of this story, but it is estimated that if the object had impacted the Earth, it would have had the destructive force of an atomic bomb.^[11] So we can thank the meteor for being in a good mood that day.

Economy student, passionate about Graphic Design, an avid enthusiast of the art of writing.