If climate change continues at the rate it’s going now, one of the most important types of clouds could eventually disappear for good, causing the Earth to reach extreme temperatures. According to a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, if enough carbon dioxide is pumped into the atmosphere, the stratocumulus clouds – which are those puffy clouds we often see in the sky – could become extinct. If that happens, the temperature here on Earth could climb to heights that are unimaginable.

Clouds are very important to our atmosphere, as they reflect sunlight away from the surface of Earth. If you look up at the sky and notice a white blanket of clouds, those are stratocumulus clouds and researchers think that sudden jumps in the Earth’s temperature in the past could have potentially been caused by changes to these types of clouds.

Stratocumulus clouds

In newly conducted research, scientists used a supercomputer to model a small part of the sky. They noticed that if the carbon dioxide (or CO2) levels in the atmosphere reach approximately 1,200 parts per million (or ppm), stratocumulus clouds end up breaking apart. As of right now, CO2 levels have already reached past 410 ppm which is quite high considering that it was at 280 ppm prior to the industrial revolution.

Unfortunately, there is more carbon dioxide going into our atmosphere each year. If we continue at the rate we’re going now, Earth’s atmosphere could reach 1,200 ppm in only 100 to 150 years. Now that’s scary. Earth’s temperature could reach an average of 14 degrees Fahrenheit higher in addition to the dangerous changes that are already being created from greenhouse gases. Not to mention the fact that Earth’s ice would melt causing devastating rises in the water levels.

To put this scenario into better perspective, the last time that Earth was that warm, crocodiles were swimming in the Arctic and the area around the equator was pretty much lifeless and scorching hot.

Stratocumulus clouds

If the stratocumulus clouds disappeared from our atmosphere, they probably wouldn’t come back until the carbon dioxide levels dropped below where they are now. There is, however, questions regarding this current data, as the 1,200 ppm number could end up being higher or lower as scientists conduct more research on this issue. Nevertheless, I think it’s pretty clear that something needs to be done to protect our atmosphere and the dangerous issues surrounding climate change.

One very strange phenomenon that has become more popular and pervasive in the world of the paranormal is what has come to be called the Mandela Effect. It deals with the preponderance of people who have very vivid memories of things being differently than they are, of recalling people, events, and places differently than the way they are represented in actual reality, a sort of a mass misremembering of the same facts or details by a large number of people. This can apply to popular culture such as movies, or extend to historical events and beyond, and it has even popped up in the form of people remembering the actual geography of the world differently than what it is.

The theory itself has its origins in 2010 with a paranormal researcher named Fiona Broome, when she found that a fact she clearly remembered seeing on the news, that Nelson Mandela had died in prison in the 1980s, was actually wrong and that he in fact was still alive at the time, indeed living until 2013, when he died from a respiratory illness at his home. This perplexed her, as she so vividly and clearly remembered his death in the 80s, and when she voiced this puzzlement online there was a deluge of others who seemed to share this memory of the same thing, claiming that they clearly recalled seeing it on the news, could envision the reports, and even that they had been taught about it at school. The name eventually stuck as a new phenomenon that became a persistent feature of the lexicon of the paranormal, and the term “Mandela Effect” stuck, encompassing all manner of feature of our reality that for whatever reasons a massive number of people remember completely wrong, perhaps suggesting the possibility of alternate parallel dimensions beyond our comprehension.

A very common facet of the Mandela Effect with regards to geography is the surprisingly large number of people who distinctly and clearly remember whole countries being different shapes, sizes, or in different positions than they were before. The most dramatic of these are those places that seem to have completely changed location. A very famous example of this is the island nation of New Zealand. Without looking at a map, where do you picture it being? Does it lie to the northeast of Australia or the southeast? Is it to the east of the continent or the west?

The correct answer is that New Zealand is located to the far southeast of Australia, approximately 1,200 miles from the mainland, but for many this might be quite a jolt. It appears that there is a large and very vocal population of people, in rare cases even those who actually live in New Zealand, who insist that this is wrong according to their memory. Interestingly, there seem to be different camps of those who remember the location differently. For some it is supposed to be much farther south than it is, for others they learned it was to the northeast rather than the southeast, and usually remembered as much closer to the Australia mainland than actually is, and for others still it is supposed to lie completely on the other side of the Australian continent to the west rather than the east. One Reddit commenter says of this all:

I remember it west of Australia. Sixteen years ago I bought a globe. I was actually thinking about Australia and New Zealand and how I didn’t know much about either, so I thought I should really know where they are. So I looked at my globe and saw it as a big landmass west of Australia. I thought ‘this is a good way to remember it, it seems exotic to me because it is further away from the United States, further west.

This seems to be no minor quibble or random mistake for some of these people, as there are plenty of people who seem to be genuinely shocked and horrified to learn the real location. As another Reddit commenter says, it was practically life-changing for him to be confronted with this anomalous geographical discrepancy:

When this all came to my attention a couple days ago I go over to my sister’s room and look for this globe we’ve had for years. First place I look is for New Zealand northeast area of Australia… lo and behold, New Zealand is now southeast of Australia in the middle of nowhere. At that point it felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. I won the geography award in grade school and have a plaque that my parents still have on display, and I’m willing to scan it to prove it. Geography is something I’ve always had a keen awareness of.

One commonly held memory of where people think New Zealand is

It is not only New Zealand either, and there are other island countries that people adamantly insist were once in different locations. A popular one is the country of Sri Lanka. Again, where do you remember it as being? If you said it is obviously directly to the south of India, then you are wrong. Sri Lanka actually lies to the southeast of India, a fact that seems to really bother a lot of people who insist that it should be directly to the south of the tip of mainland India. One commenter on the site The Mandela Effect has said of this:

I have interviewed 5 persons regarding the location of Sri Lanka(ceylon)and asked them to draw a map, all of them drew it as they remembered and it was far far downwards, further I asked them to draw a horizontal line touching the tip of India’s extremity, the line went over the sea, all clear… and all were cynics.

Almost everybody remembers the country located further south beyond the tip of India. Being Indian I have the advantage of getting genuine feed back, and the peculiarity of Sri Lanka is that India is the only neighbor and people in India are aware of this sensivity and are keen enough to notice the location.

Other island nations are also constantly remembered as being in the wrong place as well. Cuba is often remembered as having been closer to Florida than Mexico, but it is actually closer to the latter. It is 214 km from Mexico and 228 km from Florida. Japan is also hotly debated, with a great many people convinced that it used to be farther south, nearer to China, when it actually sits much farther north than is recalled, next to Russia. Greenland is also remembered as in the wrong place, and many are quite shocked to learn that it not only is only 14 miles from Canada, but that it is actually much larger than recalled, a full 836,000 Sq. miles in area, about 21 times the size of Iceland. Speaking of different sizes and shapes, a large number of people also remember Russia as looking much different than it does, claiming that it looks decidedly wrong when looking at it now, to the point that it is baffling for some.

To anyone who correctly remembers the location, shapes, and sizes of these places all of this talk of how they are remembered differently must seem absurd, but it’s interesting how persistent and uniform many of these false memories are, how badly they jar and unsettle those faced with cold, hard reality, and they are enough that there are whole forums devoted to heatedly discussing these issues. Just about as bizarre as remembering countries in different places are those locations that seem to have appeared from nowhere or to have conversely disappeared off the face of the Earth.

By far the weirdest and most intensely discussed of these among Mandela Effect theorists nowadays is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean called Svalbard, which is an Unincorporated area of Norway. It is a large land, 23,561 sq. miles in dimension, with a rich history spanning back to the 12th century and its own culture, traditions, and people. The problem is that for a lot of people it should not be there, and looks decidedly out of place on maps, just sitting out there where nothing existed before. How could so many people misremember this place as not existing? It might seem rather ridiculous if you remember correctly, but there is a very vocal contingent of people who are certain that Svalbard never existed until very recently for them.

Svalbard

Another place that quite a few people don’t remember existing before is the Canadian territory of Nunavut, which is the largest territory of Canada and is larger than Texas, California and France combined. Some people find this baffling, as they have never heard of it, and although it is a relatively new territory, being split from the Northwest Territories in 1999, it still is rather jarring for a surprising number of people. Perhaps even stranger is a country that was in existence from the Middle Ages all the way up until the 1800s, called Great Tartary. It was considered a major power at the time, and was vast in area, being even larger than Russia, positioned in the northern part of Asia and bounded by Siberia on the north and west. Although it is no longer a country, for such a large country with such an illustrious history it seems odd that so few people have ever heard of it, with many insisting that it never existed before.

Adding to all of the anomalies we have looked at so far are persistent and pervasive miscellaneous geographical conundrums that a lot of people remember wrong in the same way. A common one is that there is the vast number of people who swear that they distinctly learned that the United States has 51 states, or even 52, rather than the correct 50, and insist that in their remembered history Puerto Rico is a state. This might seem ludicrous to some, but they are adamant that their memory on this is very clear. Another is the location of Fort Knox, the military base famous for its gold reserves, which is located in the state of Kentucky, but which many very clearly remember as being in Tennessee. There are even those who claim to have been stationed there or know people who were, who insist that they were in Tennessee, not Kentucky. Weird.

Fort Knox

Again, for those who remember this all correctly, this must all seem pretty wild. It must seem to obviously be just the result of ignorance or stupidity mixed with the fact that most people don’t look at maps on a regular basis and their mind just sort of fills in the blanks of what they don’t know. Yet, a lot of the people who claim these discrepancies between what they remember and reality are well-educated, normal people, and these mistakes are so clearly remembered wrongly in a similar way across the board that it is at the very least an interesting psychological phenomenon, and perhaps something far stranger. People are so convinced that the world once looked differently that there are even whole maps available online of how the world should look to them versus how it actually appears. Why do these people remember these geographical details so wrongly and to such a degree that it is very often mentally troubling for them when confronted with the truth? It largely depends on who you ask.

For proponents of the Mandela Effect, this is all indicative of some sort of mysterious mass shift between two different realities. This relies on a concept known as the “multiverse,” which proposes that there are infinite parallel and offshoot universes coexisting with ours, with infinite permutations and infinite versions of you inhabiting many of them. In some of these alternate dimensions the difference could be very slight, such as you wearing a red t-shirt today instead of a blue one. In another, things could be more dramatic, such as having a different president, another one in which history is different, or even one in which the dinosaurs never went extinct.

In relation to the Mandela Effect, the idea is at some point a number of people has transferred over to a different timeline in a parallel dimension, while retaining the memories of how things were in their own reality. These two realities might be nearly identical, with the only differences being subtle yet jarring, such as in this case the location or size of a country or place. Making it even more bizarre is that this may have involved a straight swap with the you from this new reality and the other one, meaning that while one version of you wonders where, say, Svalbard came from, the other you from this reality is in the one you came from, wondering where in the world Svalbard went. For proponents of this cause of the Mandela Effect, it is all caused by the fact that the details and timelines of the two parallel universe don’t line up exactly, which can drive these people nuts and lodge into their psyche like splinters in the mind. How this shift happened or how many people were involved is anyone’s guess, and the ones who remember correctly are the ones who never left, and are safely in their home reality.

It’s all a very interesting, sci-fi sounding concept that is great as a thought experiment, but unfortunately there is ultimately no evidence at all that this has actually happened to any degree other than the insistence of those who are absolutely sure that reality does not match what they so clearly and potently remember. This forces us to look at more mundane possible explanations, and this mainly comes down to pointing out just how unreliable and malleable memories can be. Indeed, it has been show that memories can be influenced or even created with enough suggestion and belief, and false memories are surprisingly common. Although we still don’t fully understand how memories work or how our brain processes them, it has been found that memories can be subject to changes and evolve or be warped over time, and this can be influenced by how confident you are in that memory, even if it’s wrong, and what those around you think. As the site Stuff.com New Zealandsays:

It seems that the act of remembering something over and over again builds your confidence in that memory – even if you are more and more wrong every time. Which, really, explains the Mandela Effect well. You may stumble upon the community with a few things misremembered, a few details out of place, then by virtue of reading about hundreds of others who agree with you, set that wrong memory in stone. Suddenly you aren’t thinking “oh I thought that was there,” you’re thinking “I definitely know that it was in a different place”. Your ideology is rewarded and reinforced, as it is in any community.

Is that what is going on here? Are so many people just conjuring up these memories in their heads? Is this the result of some sort of mental short circuit or psychological trick, or is there something else at work to it all? Has the world changed from one universe and timeline to another for some people? There are numerous other examples of the Mandela Effect and geography, and I have only presented some of the odder and more widely discussed, but they all seem perplexing and widespread enough to give food for thought, regardless of whether one remembers it the “right way” or not. Considering there is not much we are able to do to prove the existence of other realities, or that people have traveled unwittingly between them, it is likely that the debate will continue, with those who think it is all an illusion on one side and those individuals for whom the world looks different than their memory on the other.

I often like to look into reports that truly skirt around the periphery of the paranormal and cryptozoology, the cases that stand out as being particularly odd and baffling. Such cases truly tax the imagination and leave us scrambling to try and explain just what in the world could be going on, and challenge our notions of what we think we know. Here I have collected together an eclectic mix of very weird encounters with everything from jellyfish floating through the sky, to squid-like beasts and octopod monsters roaming the wilderness, so sit back, buckle up, and enjoy this journey to the other side of the bizarre.

One of the stranger things one could see soaring through the skies is a jellyfish, but there are actually numerous reports throughout the world of just that. These incredibly bizarre entities are often reported as looking very similar to a typical jellyfish one would find bobbing about in the sea, only in this case soaring through the air, and in some accounts they are described as being able to change density, color, or size, and to be able to go almost completely transparent, and there have even been cases of some sort of bioluminescence present. They are variously reported as moving about on their own through some unknown form of propulsion or merely at the whim of the air currents, and they are always just about as otherworldly as can be.

There have been particularly strange accounts of encounters with flying jellyfish going back decades. In the 1950s a police man in England claimed to have had a run in with a low flying sky jellyfish as he was riding his bicycle on patrol. He claimed that it drifted right down in front of him and that he actually bumped up against it, describing the sensation as similar to brushing up against a soft blanket, and that it had a slightly unpleasant smell of mildew. In 1958 there was also report from Florida, where a policeman named Faustin Galegos found a translucent purple blob about the size of a soccer ball outside of his house. He claimed that when he had approached it seemed to be some sort of dying creature, and when he picked it up the thing just sort of evaporated in his hands.

A more recent account was given on the site Phantoms and Monsters, and comes from a witness in Perth, Australia, who is referred to merely as “BD.” The witness claims that in 2012 he was out in front of his house one evening having a cigarette when his attention was drawn to the curious sight of the light patterns of the stars being disrupted by something passing over them. At first he thought it might be a plane, but it soon became apparent that this was no aircraft. The witness explains:

As it got closer, the way it moved resembled the way a jellyfish would swim if it was horizontal. It was hard to describe, but it looked to be expanding at the front like a balloon, then using that air to propel itself along. It was roughly 100 meters above me and I watched it for 10 minutes. After that it was out of sight. This was during a clear night sky in Australia. I am very familiar with aircraft as I live relatively close to Jandakot airport and we see/hear them all the time. It was certainly not a machine of any kind.

I yelled out to my Mother-in-Law who was staying at the time to come out and look. She also saw it. I filmed it on my smartphone, but being 8pm at night it was pitch black and you couldn’t see anything. If I had to guess, I would say the feeling I was left with is that it was some kind of creature. It moved gracefully and gradually in large deliberate movements. Like a large bird would do with a large flap of its wings, then gliding for a bit, although this was unlike anything I could describe. It appeared to be translucent in parts and remained at the same altitude and speed but just completely silent.

Amazingly, there was a follow up report from a different witness, who claims that he and a friend saw what appears to be the same or a similar creature around Perth at around the same time as this sighting. The witness says of the creature:

I would like to confirm the story of the flying jellyfish like creature as described on your forum by “BD,” There were two of us actually not just myself. We were in Perth CBD actually having a glass of wine on a quite loud jazz music playing balcony about 10 meters from the ground. I am so thrilled to find out there is another person who has seen this. The creature was behaving exactly as described by “BD” so basically like jellyfish but without any long tentacles – about a size of a balloon.

It was kind of changing according to the different colored lighting attached to the balcony and it was flying upwards so effortlessly. It is really precious I have finally found this. I have been searching for so long. I have to be honest I don’t recall the exact day but it must have been the same night as “BD” mentioned. We had seen it around 9-10pm either friday or saturday. The creature wasn’t too shy either meaning it didn’t fly in a hurry. Would gladly put my hand on my heart on this one and now may actually try to find it again, but who knows how often do they appear.

A very odd claim was posted on the site Norcalblogs, from a commenter calling himself Pie Guevara, who claims that his uncle, an Oscar Guevera, had taken part in a scientific survey of these sorts of creatures in the 1950s and 60s. The remote areas north of San Fransisco had apparently experienced a spate of sightings for over a decade of what were usually referred to as “Space Jellies,” which would congregate in the upper atmosphere along the coast, after which they would soar up into the upper atmosphere out of sight. Pie provides a letter that he allegedly received from his uncle, which outlines the phenomenon and his study of it, and reads:

This coalescence of “space jellies”, as we called them, was assumed to be part of a seasonal migration pattern in and about the western Pacific. With a small joint grant fund from several philanthropic scientific organizations (which shall remain unnamed), I developed a small, high altitude, long distance ultralight aircraft (the first of its kind) assisted by an in-flight deployable and detachable ovoid helium balloon. This platform was developed as it had become evident through observation and experimentation that the behavior of these creatures was disturbed by the approach of larger aircraft. It was not by coincidence that the craft bore a distinct resemblance to the large, presumably mature form, of “space jelly” creatures themselves.

Working within a shoe-string budget, I deployed a modified aqualung attached to a motorcycle helmet and a small forge bellows that was fashioned into a crude but effective and light weight re-breathing system for high altitudes. For warmth I wore a gorilla suit (procured from a costumer’s auction in Emeryville) and had it fitted with a lining of goose down. From below the aircraft was lowered a fair sized grappling hook with several large mackerels tied to it with bailing wire. Inside of six weeks in the fall of 1973 I had snagged most of these diaphanous jelly fish like buggers. None of the captured survived the experience and within minutes dissolved into an odd steamy smoke. On my final expedition, as per standard operating procedure, I reached the specified location at an altitude of 9500 feet, deployed the balloon, and floated up into the remaining few of these creatures which, apparently, died of fright on the spot, dissolving into threadlike wisps before me.

Besides the regrettable loss of the subjects under study there was one more unfortunate circumstance. On the last mission, after jettisoning the balloon, I was flying in from the Pacific over the Farallons at about 5000 feet towards my hidden base of operations in a remote area of [redacted]. I was spotted by a US Navy crew on a practice and shakedown cruise flying a restored antique Consolidated Vultee PB2Y Coronado that was to be displayed in a few days at a Fleet Week exposition near Fisherman’s wharf. They veered off course, followed me, and executed a close and slow pass-by over San Francisco Bay. So close I could see the faces of the pilot and crew. The flying boat then abruptly dropped altitude and beached near the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in what, for all intents and purposes, appeared to be an emergency landing.

Weeks later I learned, through some Navy sources in Vallejo who hung out Fridays at the [redacted] Bar and Grill, that the pilot and crew recovered from the plane had babbled incoherently and for days all they could get out of them was, “Flying fish bear … flying fish bear …” Needless to say this story has never been declassified and likely never will be. The only reason I relate it now is lay to rest any fears that may still exist about these creatures and confident in the knowledge that no one in their right mind would ever actually believe it.

This is truly a far-out and spectacular account, and one can’t help but wonder how much veracity any of it holds. A guy in a gorilla suit collecting flying jellyfish from the upper atmosphere? Flying Fish Bears? It is all quite beyond bizarre. You can’t make this stuff up, folks. In December of 1999 there was a rather unusual sighting of something like this at Vitebsk, in the Republic of Belarus. The two witnesses described the object as being somewhat tubular or cigar-shaped, with a front part that was rounded and asymmetric, and a rear part that seemed blurred. It was apparently a blue and red color, and exhibited a somewhat transparent quality, as well as what looked to be some sort of flickering bioluminescence. Whatever it was moved with a sort of undulating movement and made no noise during the sighting, and after a while it was reported as just vanishing into thin air. The witnesses would claim that it was not an aircraft, and that they had had the distinct impression that it was a living creature, saying it somewhat resembled an animal known as the glass squid (Cranchiidae).

Glass squid

What could such creatures be? One idea is that they are a type of theoretical organism known as an “atmospheric beast.” Atmospheric beasts, or atmospheric life-forms, as they are often called, are said to be organisms that live their entire lives floating high in the atmosphere, undetected by humans. These creatures are most often described as having bodies that are semi-solid, or almost insubstantial, with some reports even claiming that they are able to adjust their density from almost immaterial and invisible to more solid, depending on as yet unknown factors. Numerous theories have been posited as to how such seemingly fantastical organisms could manage to stay adrift in the air, such as air bladders or very low body densities.

The appearance of these atmospheric beasts varies wildly. Accounts have variously described them as amorphous and cloud-like behemoths, finned squid-like creatures, floating jellyfish, translucent, vaporous blobs, flitting rods, amoeba-like organisms, gelatinous oddities, and even dragons. The sizes of atmospheric beasts likewise run the gamut from tiny and bird-like, to gargantuan monsters hundreds of feet long. Although these enigmatic creatures are said to typically lurk too high in the atmosphere or to be too insubstantial to see with the naked eye, there are instances when one might become observable for some reason. Indeed, there has been a substantial amount of sightings reports over the years from all over the world describing unusual flying monsters that do not fit into the typical mold of thunderbirds or other flying cryptids. These atmospheric life forms have even allegedly been photographed, and there have been reports of the gelatinous remains of dead ones on occasion. Are such sightings evidence of this type of lifeform?

While flying jellyfish are weird enough, let’s move on to something just about as strange. One thing that one would not typically expect to find out walking around on land is an octopod beast, but there have been some downright surreal reports of these as well. One earlier and very weird case comes from the battlefields of World War II, in particular the Battle of Okinawa, in Japan. Lasting from April until June of 1945, the 82-day-long battle was envisioned as the first step in a planned eventual invasion of the Japanese Okinawa Islands and on to the mainland. It was the largest amphibious assault of the Pacific Theater, and saw some of the fiercest, most intense, and bloodiest fighting of the entire war. From here among the many scattered dead bodies strewn about in the aftermath of the fighting come some odd tales of encounters some Japanese troops allegedly had with something very bizarre indeed.

Fighting at the Battle of Okinawa

There are some scattered stories of Japanese troops surveying the smoking battlefields and telling of seeing what appeared to be very large octopuses picking through the corpses. These creatures were said to be around 4 feet in height, and rather than slither about like one would expect a normal octopus to do, they were said to walk about on their tentacles with their heads held above the ground. When one of the beasts was startled or on alert, it would apparently stretch its tentacles up to hold its head higher, like a camera mounted upon a tripod. Making it all more sinister is that the soldiers who saw these creatures claimed that they seemed to be actually coming to feed upon the corpses of the fallen. It is hard to know what to make of these reports, and one wonders if it just wasn’t a spooky forgotten wartime legend of the battlefield.

Then we have what has come to be known as the “Octosquatch.” In the summer of 1961, a 29-year-old truck driver named Arquimedes Sanchez was driving along a precipitous mountain road through the Basque mountains in Spain at around 11PM, along with an unnamed companion, on their way to the town of Puerto de Barazar. As they rounded a bend, their headlights hit a bizarre and rather monstrous being standing upon an embankment nearby, which prompted the pair to stop their vehicle.

When they peered through the murk ahead of them they claim that they saw a “hairy octopus,” which stood around 4 feet tall, with glowing eyes and “tentacle-like” arms. The witnesses and the thing apparently sat there completely frozen and immobile for several minutes, both parties probably just as startled and scared as the other, before Sanchez snapped out of it and slammed the accelerator, which caused the weird apparition to scurry backwards away from the threat, after which Sanchez backed up and tried again, apparently intent on running it over. Interestingly, the otherworldly intruder refused to take off into the night, instead always just managing to avoid being run over, as if it were all a game. Finally the two men, neither who were willing to step out of the vehicle to investigate, drove off to leave the being behind, never to be seen again.

In more recent years, in December of 2014 there was a very odd report taken by the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), concerning an outlandish bipedal creature that was sighted and almost hit by a car in the vicinity of the sleepy town of Carmel, in Highland County, Ohio. The witnesses, a former Marine and his wife, had just moved to the area, and one evening they were driving along the rural road through a wooded area towards their home when a 7-foot-tall creature with muscular, very bendable, tentacle-like legs, and a tubular body without any arms or head ran in front of their car and into the woods on the other side of the road, narrowly avoiding being hit by the vehicle in the process.

It would later be described as being a dull, sickly grey in color and looking sort of like a “walking squid,” and after the report was featured in the local paper there was a lot of speculation as to what it might be. One of the most popular ideas is that this was merely a misidentified deer that had just happened to be witnessed in a strange, bipedal pose. This sort of makes sense, as white-tailed deer are known to rear up on their hind legs and even take a few steps in that position, but it seems odd that one would walk so far, and it doesn’t really seem to totally match the witnesses’ description. Interestingly, the witnesses also claimed that there was a large sphere of grass near their house that is always greener than the surroundings and where snow does not gather, so make of that what you will. Whatever it is, the “Walking Squid” Of Carmel, Ohio, is a truly bizarre case that can’t easily be explained away.

Here we have looked at an array of utterly bizarre tales of jellyfish, squid, and octopus-like creatures popping up in the oddest of places. These obviously could not be considered normal examples of these types of animals, so what were they? Some sort of undiscovered species? Aliens? Interdimensional interlopers? Are they just tall tales or hallucinations? No matter what the answer may be, these are certainly highly odd cases that go beyond the strange, and elude any easy classification.

The mystery boom phenomenon continues worldwide without any official explanation. While these incidents are spread out around the globe, the similarities among all of these unexplained ground-shaking booms are too striking to ignore. Even more striking is the deafening silence of law enforcement and governmental agencies. Are these all merely unconnected natural events? Why the sudden and sharp increase in frequency, then?

February has seen (heard?) cities all throughout North America rattled by powerful and mysterious explosion-like sounds. The phenomenon continued this week as cities in South Carolina, Arkansas, Kentucky, and England were rattled by unknown booms. It all began on February 18 when residents of the Charleston, South Carolina area felt the ground shake and heard a powerful boom. Geologists with the College of Charleston said that while they’re investigating the reports, it appears the noise was likely a sonic boom. The area is home to Joint Base Charleston, a military complex which houses units from every branch of the military.

The next day, residents of Nottingham, England reported a late night “explosion” heard for miles. Concerned residents described the sound as “like a bomb going off,” and have suspected either a meteorite or explosive device. Louise Hunt of St. Ann’s said the noise was too powerful to have been terrestrial in origin and believes its perpetrator originated from space:

It was like a big explosion, I put a status on Facebook and a few of my friends replied all saying they heard it too. It was really strange as we heard no sirens afterwards my partner then suggested it could if been a meteorite that exploded in mid-air somewhere.

When asked for comment from Nottinghamshire Live, Nottinghamshire Police merely shrugged, said they’ve “received no reports,” and presumably went back to their crosswords.

Nottingham, England.

Back in the US, another terrifyingly loud set of booms rattled Fort Knox, Kentucky on February 22 – although these seem to have an explanation. The U.S. Army’s Marine Detachment has been conducting live fire tank training this week, creating booms loud enough to be heard 30 miles away. While residents of Fort Knox are used to the loud noises generated by military exercises, residents in surrounding areas say the noises usually don’t travel so far. Why the sudden change?

The month in mystery booms ended in the cities of Ward and Beebe, Arkansas, where residents heard a loud, unexplained explosion on February 24. Local police forces acknowledged the booms but asked residents not to call them in unless there was a “real” emergency.

Every week I write a round-up of the week’s mystery booms, and every week I’m left to wonder what’s behind the phenomenon. There are far too many identical incidents occurring each week for this to be merely a coincidence. Someone out there knows something the public doesn’t. 

“Shhh. The Masked Singer is on. Keep shopping. OBEY.”

Or maybe not. Maybe these are merely unconnected and insignificant natural phenomena. Is my obsession with these booms all a case of the Baader-Meinhof effect in which individuals first notice a phenomenon or occurrence only to then see the same phenomenon everywhere? If it were only me hearing these noises I might think so, but the fact that they’re receiving the attention of at least local news outlets shows that the phenomenon has been heard and felt by thousands if not tens of thousands of individuals around the world. What is causing these mystery booms?

After much debate over the last 150 years, paleontologists have finally identified the mysterious creature that lived hundreds of millions of years ago. The oddly shaped creature, which is flat-looking with a long arm coming out of its side, is known as a stylophoran which is an ancient relative of starfish, sea urchins, sea lilies, brittle stars, sea cucumbers, and feather stars.

Sea Urchins

The fossils – which included around 450 specimens of the stylophoran – were discovered during a 2014 excavation at the Fezouata Formation which is along the edge of the Sahara Desert in the southern part of Morocco. These fossils date back approximately 478 million years.

Researchers were able to find out exactly what type of creature it was because their fossils had “unequivocal evidence for exceptionally preserved soft parts, both in the appendage and in the body of stylophorans,” explained Bertrand Lefebvre, who is a researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the Laboratory of Geology of Lyon which is located in France.

After analyzing the fossils using a binocular microscope, they noticed that there were also soft parts. Since soft tissues hardly ever fossilize, the stylophorans were only recognized for their hard skeletal parts and not for their soft insides. According to Lefebvre, “Their internal anatomy was not only entirely unknown, but also – and mostly – highly controversial.”

Stylophoran fossils have been discovered around the world since the 1850s which led researchers to confirm that they lived from the middle Cambrian to the late Carboniferous periods, which date back from around 510 million to 310 million years ago.

These creatures had two main parts: a core body and an appendage that were both around 1.2 inches long. From the 1850s to the 1950s, it was believed that stylophorans were “normal” echinoderms with its appendage being compared to the stem of sea lilies. However, in the early 1960s, Georges Ubaghs, who was a Belgian paleontologist, discovered that the creature’s appendage was quite a bit different than a stem and more like an arm for feeding – similar to a starfish.

Starfish

A few years later, in the late 1960s, Richard Jefferies, who was a British paleontologist, suggested that the main body of the stylophoran was instead a head containing a brain and a pharynx, while its appendage consisted of muscles and a notochord which is a type of primitive backbone. He also believed that stylophorans were the missing link between echinoderms (invertebrates) and chordates (vertebrates).

Much later, in the 2000s, another British paleontologist named Andrew Smith gave his own interpretation of the creature. He believed that stylophorans were not the missing link between echinoderms and chordates and instead they were primitive deuterostomes which put them right in the middle of the gap between acorn worms and echinoderms.

With this new discovery, researchers can perform testing on the creature’s soft tissue and find out which of the theories best explains the creature. Ubaghs’ theory, however, does seem to be the most plausible. The creature’s flat body consisted of intestines and its appendage was more like an arm since it had a water vascular system which would have aided the creature to eat and move the same way that the arms of starfish do.

With their new study (which can be read here), we finally know the origins of the mysterious creature that has baffled scientists for over a hundred years. Lefebvre explained it best when he said, “This discovery is of particular importance, because it brings to an end a 150-year-old debate about the position of these bizarre-looking fossils in the tree of life.”

• Click here to see pictures and a video of the stylophoran.

Credit: Emmanuel Robert

Credit: Copyright Rich Mooi/California Academy of Science

Ready to feel a bit useless? A boy from Memphis, Tennessee has apparently become the youngest person to ever build a fusion reactor after successfully building one in the spare room in his home using parts sourced from eBay. Jackson Oswalt, now 14, began construction on the machine when he was 12 and completed his working fusion reactor just before his 13th birthday.

Jackson Oswalt says that after reading a story of another boy, Taylor Wilson, who grabbed headlines when he built a working reactor at age 14, he wanted to beat his record. So he did. With his parents’ financial backing and a self-taught course in nuclear engineering, Jackson Oswalt built a small, working, fusion reactor that has apparently been verified by nuclear engineers. The machine works by running 50,000 volts of electricity through deuterium gas to force the deuterium atoms together, similar to the process that powers the sun.

Despite their admittedly limited understanding of what their son was working on,  his parents provided financial support to the tune of $8,000-$10,000 dollars for parts that Jackson bought off of eBay. According to Jackson, finding the components was fairly straight-forward:

“The start of the process was just learning about what other people had done with their fusion reactors. After that, I assembled a list of parts I needed. [I] got those parts off eBay primarily and then often times the parts that I managed to scrounge off of eBay weren’t exactly what I needed. So, I’d have to modify them to be able to do what I needed to do for my project.”

Jackson Oswalt’s nuclear fusion reactor.

Credit: (CC BY-SA 4.0) James Smith39

The process of building the reactor was, unsurprisingly, a bit more complicated. There isn’t a “Nuclear Fusion For Young Engineers” guidebook just yet, so according to Jackson, the process involved a lot of trial and error and consulting the Open Source Fusor Research Consortium, a forum for amateur amateur physicists and budding mad scientists trying to construct reactors of their own. Jackson Oswalt says that once he began tinkering, the pieces began to fall into place:

“After a while, it became pretty simple to realize how it all worked together, but at the start it was definitely figuring out one aspect of it, memorizing what that actually meant and then moving on to a different aspect of it. Eventually all those pieces of the puzzle came together to make a good project.”

His father, Chris Oswalt,  says that although he doesn’t know anything about how a fusion reactor works, he knew it was likely a pretty dangerous project and made sure his son consulted with experts to avoid electrocution, radiation poisoning, or any other the other potential hazards involved in nuclear reactors.

Jackson Oswalt’s resulted were verified by Richard Hull, a retired engineer and administrator of the Open Source Fusor Research Consortium, who says his machine works and that Jackson Oswalt is the youngest person in America, and likely the youngest person in the world to build a working fusion reactor.