Most days, the weather feels comfortingly familiar: clouds roll in, rain falls, the forecast more or less behaves. But every so often, the sky does something so strange it feels like a glitch in reality, as if the laws of physics briefly forgot how they’re supposed to work. Around the world, scientists have been ...
is the most dramatic show we never stop watching, yet most of us only glance at the forecast and move on. Behind every strange cloud, sudden gust, or eerie glow in the sky, there’s a story of invisible forces colliding and balancing. Scientists are now uncovering patterns in these wild displays that were once ...
Picture this: you’re watching a thunderstorm from your window when suddenly, a glowing orange sphere appears, floating silently through your living room. It drifts past your television, hovers near the ceiling, then vanishes with a gentle pop. Sounds like science fiction, right? Yet thousands of people have reported exactly this phenomenon throughout history. Ball lightning ...
Imagine strolling down a winter beach and discovering thousands of perfectly round ice spheres scattered across the sand like nature’s bowling balls. You might think you’ve stumbled upon some bizarre storm aftermath or an elaborate art installation. Yet what you’re witnessing is one of Mother Nature’s most mesmerizing winter phenomena, where the laws of physics ...
Picture yourself watching a thunderstorm from your window when suddenly, a glowing sphere the size of a basketball floats past your house. It moves slowly, defying gravity, and vanishes with a gentle pop. You’ve just witnessed one of nature’s most perplexing phenomena. Ball lightning has mystified scientists, terrified observers, and sparked countless theories for centuries, ...
Have you ever gazed up at the sky and witnessed what appears to be a flaming rainbow stretching across the horizon? You might think you’re experiencing a supernatural phenomenon or even a dangerous natural disaster. The truth is far more fascinating than fiction. These mesmerizing displays, popularly called “fire rainbows,” are neither fires nor rainbows. ...
NASA’s astronaut, Nichole “Vapor” Ayers, has photographed a spectacular atmospheric event – a large red ‘jellyfish’ sprite soaring above a thunderstorm in North America. The striking image, taken from the International Space Station (ISS) on July 3, 2025, gives scientists a rare view of sprites from the top which is a form of lightning and ...
NASA’s Terra satellite took a stunning picture of the cosmos in May 2015. It showed six Atlantic islands painting the sky with swirling, hypnotic cloud spirals that covered more than 260,000 square miles (670,000 km²). These “von Kármán vortices” are one of the most beautiful atmospheric dances in nature. They got their name from the ...
