Tropical Storm Florence, presently circulating in the south-central Atlantic Ocean, may move north and east and make landfall somewhere along the US East Coast later this week. If the storm reaches this area of the ocean, unsually warm water will cause it to increase rapidly in strength. This is the same effect that has been present in the Gulf of Mexico since the early part of this century.
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A 12-year-old girl has taken a picture of what appears to be the infamous Loch Ness Monster. On holiday with her parents at the Scottish loch, Charlotte Robinson spotted something popping up out of the water about fifty feet away, and managed to capture a photograph of the creature when it resurfaced for a second look.
Charlotte describes her August 17 encounter: "There was something in the water about 50 feet from the shore. I took a photo. It had a neck and head was in the shape of a hook. I just took what I saw. It was black – I just don’t know how far it was out of the water. I’m not good at judging distances. But after about a minute it disappeared and then came back up again in a different place."
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A group of theoretical physicists led by controversial Oxford University mathematical physicist Roger Penrose has offered new evidence that there may have been older universes that came before our own, by finding the ghosts of black holes that existed in those ancient universes.
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Early last year, a little-regarded atmospheric phenomenon gained the attention of researchers when citizen scientists drew attention to it on social media: Giving it the highly-scientific name of "Steve", this luminous purple ribbon that occasionally streaks across the sky is a fast-moving stream of hot gases that occurs high in the atmosphere. Initially assumed to be part of the aurora borealis, a recent study of the phenomenon has found that it has nothing to do with the display of charged particles that light up the polar atmosphere — so, just what is Steve?
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