Authorities in several Midwestern states were flooded Wednesday night with reports of a gigantic fireball lighting up the sky, the National Weather Service said.

The fireball was visible for about 15 minutes beginning about 10 p.m., said the National Weather Service in Sullivan, Wisconsin, just west of Milwaukee.

“The fireball was seen over the northern sky, moving from west to east,” said the NWS in the Quad Cities area, which includes parts of Iowa and Illinois.

“Well before it reached the horizon, it broke up into smaller pieces and was lost from sight,” the service said. “Several reports of a prolonged sonic boom were received from areas north of Highway 20, along with shaking of homes, trees and various other objects including wind chimes,” it said.

The fireball was seen across parts of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.

Full report with video – CNN

Tweet

• View Comments

There is something strange in the cosmic neighbourhood. An unknown object in the nearby galaxy M82 has started sending out radio waves, and the emission does not look like anything seen anywhere in the universe before.

“We don’t know what it is,” says co-discoverer Tom Muxlow of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics near Macclesfield, UK.

The thing appeared in May last year, while Muxlow and his colleagues were monitoring an unrelated stellar explosion in M82 using the MERLIN network of radio telescopes in the UK. A bright spot of radio emission emerged over only a few days, quite rapidly in astronomical terms. Since then it has done very little except baffle astrophysicists.

Full report – New Scientist

Tweet

• View Comments

An enormous crustacean that attached itself to a submarine scouring the depths of the Gulf of Mexico is eliciting shock, awe and a touch of skepticism among Web readers — but scientists say the critter is just an impressive example of a supersized species.

Photos of the beast were posted on Reddit, under the title “My God, it’s a monster!” by a user who said he worked for a deep-sea surveying company. His crew found the creature hooked onto the bottom of a remotely operated vehicle. He estimated that the behemoth — which measures 2 1/2 feet long — was creeping along at a depth of about 8,500 feet.


Reddit

Tweet

• View Comments

Hovering ominously over the city, this video of what appears to be a triangle-shaped UFO has left Russians baffled.
Sitting motionless in the sky above the Kremlin in Moscow, clips of the unexplained object have become the most-viewed videos on Russia’s YouTube.

The two videos, one taken at night from a car and one during the day, were both filmed by amateurs.

Tweet

• View Comments

A mysterious light display appearing over Norway last night has left thousands of residents in the north of the country baffled.

Witnesses compared the amazing sight to anything from a Russian rocket to a meteor or a shock wave – although no one appears to have mentioned UFOs yet.

The phenomenon began when what appeared to be a blue light seemed to soar up from behind a mountain. It stopped mid-air, then began to circulate.

Tweet

• View Comments