Weird Science

Meteorites, mysterious earthquakes and jellyfish-like lightning. Just a few of our favorite weird science stories this week.

In Germany, a young boy got zinged in the hand by what astronomers are calling "a pea-sized meteorite." Gerrit Blank told a local newspaper that the meteorite sent him "flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road." Stories of meteorites hitting humans are rare, but it does happen. From Space.com:

— November 30, 1954: In Alabama, Ann Hodges was on her couch when a 3-pound meteor crashed through her roof, bounced off a piece of furniture and hit her in the hip.

— October 9, 1992: A fireball was seen over the East Coast of the U.S., eventually breaking up into pieces. In Peekskill, New York, one of the pieces slammed into a car.

— June 21, 1994: In Spain, Jose Martin was driving near Madrid when a 3-pound meteor crashed through the windshield, hit the steering wheel and bounced into the back seat.

Earlier this month, the Texas town of Cleburne was rocked by not one, but five, small earthquakes, the first time in its 140-year history. Locals think the earth-shaking may be related to all the natural-gas drilling going on around town. John Breyer, a geology professor at Texas Christian University, pooh-poohed that idea:

"It's like the Great Wall of China. If you pull a brick out of the wall every half-mile, you are not going to affect the stability of the structure."

Jane Wiggins of Cedar Rapids, Iowa was looking out her office window one day when she spotted unusual clouds hovering in the sky:

"It looked like Armageddon. The shadows of the clouds, the lights and the darks, and the greenish-yellow backdrop."

Wiggins captured a photo of the creepy clouds and now weather watchers are pushing weather authorities to create a new class of clouds. (Bet you didn't know there were "weather watchers" OR "weather authorities"). However, Brant Foote, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, says the "new" clouds really aren't new at all: "It's not as if someone discovered a new plant in the Amazon. It's what you've seen every day. There was no atmospheric condition that caused a new kind of cloud to form."

Across the pond in Spain, an atmospheric scientist snapped a photo of a strange, jellyfish-shaped lightning, called a "sprite." Sprites, first discovered in 1989, are dark-red flashes of light that appear high above thunderstorms, lasting only 3-10 milliseconds. Scientists still don't know what causes the spooky sprites to appear, which have been linked to UFO sightings.

Read more science stories at Yahoo! Science.

- Lili Ladaga

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